Forget fingerprints - sniffing body odour could be new frontier in cyber safety

People with newer passports have become familiar with Britain’s face-scanning technology used at airports - but would they be so happy if they new a machine was smeling their armpits?

A Spanish company claims that body odour could offer “enormous potential” as a way of identifying people - after designing a chemical “sniffer” which can identify people with 85% accuracy, regardless of whether they attempt to cover up with deodorant. 

The company, Ilia Sistemas, which tested its machines on 13 volunteers, in collaboration with researchers from  Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, claim that chemical patterns in body odour are recognisable, regardless of chemical changes such as illness, and regardless of whether people use aftershave or perfume.

The resesarchers claim that body odour is actually a far older method of ‘biometric ID’ than fingerprint scans - with authorities having used bloodhounds to 'sniff' criminals for decades.


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The team also claim that the system is LESS intrusive than iris scans or fingerprint scans - with people simply able to walk through a booth while the machine would ‘smell’ them.

Face-scanning technology is not as accurate as fingerprint or iris scans - but people tend to respond badly to these, as they are associated with police and criminal records. Smelling BO offers a useful ‘halfway’ house, the team claim.

The Madrid team write, “Each person has a unique odour - separate from the use of  chemical products like deodorants, cologne and the like.”

“Odour Biometrics attempt to identify individuals based on a unique chemical pattern. Their applications cover from individual identification in airport, to the detection of different components in human body.”

The researchers are also investigating systems which can ‘smell’ illnesses such as leukaemia by chemical traces in the air.