which are the products that offer the level of security lower than a password-only one factor authentication. Sadly they are misconceived by so many people as a tool for strong authentication.

Qualified to be called a “below-one” factor authentication is the biometric products operated together with a fallback password, which can be compared to a house with two entrances placed in parallel (not in tandem).

There is nothing wrong in saying that a house with two entrances is more convenient than a house with one entrance. On the other hand, imagine someone shouting “A house with two entrances is safer against burglars than a house with one entrance” and you could immediately realize how silly and unethical it is.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong with a biometric product operated with a fallback password when the product is offered as a tool for increasing convenience. But it is not just silly but unethical and antisocial to make, sell and recommend those products as a tool for increasing security knowing that it is not the case.

Those “below-one” factor authentication products are increasingly welcomed and adopted, apparently due to support by such global brands as MS, Apple, Google, Visa, MasterCard and a number of other big businesses, leading financial institutions and government agencies as well as quite a few security experts and major media who are misled and in turn misleading.

It might be that people get brought into the chains of vicious cycles of the misled/injured unwittingly turning into the misleading/injuring who bring in new victims, who in turn become new perpetrators, repeating it exponentially, with the misled media pouring fuel oil on the fire.

Many of the experts, who awoke to this fact, may well have opted to be silent, possibly driven by their defense mechanism. With so many of them in silence, the chains of these vicious cycles only continue to bring in new victims and keep growing.

This is not an issue of the relative comparison between "good" and "better", but the absolute choice between "valid" and "harmful". We must stop the growth of those vicious cycles lest the basis of a Criminals’ Utopia should be rooted too deeply and solidly.

More analyses of this issue are offered in my writings posted on LinkedIn as “Blind Spot in Our Mind & Eye-Opening Experience”, “Possibility of Security Fiasco” and “User-Friendly or Criminal-Friendly” at
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/0_2k6KDFNHlK5mTsPfzbj1Va?trk=prof-sm

I expect that you will stay outside the abovementioned vicious cycles and hopefully launch your own investigation.

Best wishes,
Hitoshi Kokumai