Typing fingerprint — Yoseph Bagighni

Behavioral biometrics · keystroke dynamics

Your typing rhythm is a fingerprint

How long you hold each key and how fast you move between keys is surprisingly personal. Type the phrase five times and this page learns your rhythm. Then it can tell you apart from someone else typing the exact same words.

Click here and type the phrase. A typo or backspace restarts it.

Works best on a physical keyboard. Phone keyboards hide key timings.

Your rhythm, this attemptthis attempt your average

Step 1 · learn your rhythm0 / 5

—match

Type the phrase to start.

Speed—

Avg hold—

Avg gap—

Which keys gave it awaylike you off way off

Your profile is just numbers (average timings) saved in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

01CaptureEvery key press and release is timestamped to a fraction of a millisecond. Rolling into the next key early is handled.

02FeaturesHold time for each of the 24 keys plus the gap between each pair of keys: 47 numbers per attempt.

03ProfileFive attempts give your average for each number and how much it normally varies (mean absolute deviation).

04VerifyA scaled Manhattan distance compares a new attempt to your profile. The cut-off is learned from how much your own attempts differ.

Based on the scaled Manhattan detector, one of the strongest simple methods in Killourhy & Maxion's CMU keystroke benchmark. In tests with simulated typists it accepted the real person about 99% of the time and wrongly accepted a different person about 5% of the time. Real people vary more, so treat it as a demo, not a password.