One thing users who are nervous about using fingerprint technology often don't realize is that once their fingerprint is scanned for use in such security applications, it is not saved, George Skaff, vice president of marketing for biometric vendor DigitalPersona, pointed out. "We don't keep the fingerprint image -- just the data, which we use to construct an algorithm."

If one were to conduct a survey of technology publications over the past decade or so, it's a good bet there would be at least one instance in each of those years in which someone declared that "this is the year of biometrics."