About two-thirds of Australians who have suffered from misuse of their personal information would be willing to use fingerprint technology as a security measure in future.The Australian Institute of Criminology has released the results of a survey of 5000 Australians, looking at the extent of identity theft and willingness to use biometrics to enhance security.Among the respondents, 8.9 per cent reported having had their personal information misused in the preceding 12 months. Those people were asked if they would be willing to use biometric technologies in future to prevent misuse of their personal information. Respondents were most willing to use fingerprint technology, with 61 per cent saying they would use it in future.Forty-one per cent said they would be willing to use iris recognition, 37 per cent said they would be willing to use facial recognition and 31 would use voice recognition.Older Australians were more willing to use these technologies than younger people, which the researchers put down to their greater level of concern about security.The AIC report said: "As the use of digital technologies becomes more widespread and concern regarding potential criminal misuse of these technologies increases, the cybersecurity industry has sought way to improve the efficient and secure authentication of user identity."Existing systems that rely on logon and password combinations have become problematic as criminals become more adept at compromising passwords, and many users fail to deal with passwords securely. "The need for a large number of logon and password combinations has also made it difficult for users to manage this information without storing these details in insecure ways."Biometric technologies may provide a solution by allowing individuals to use their biological attributes to gain access to networks and data."The report said it was important to understand how the community perceived levels of risk and whether it was willing to use technology as a security solution, so that future policy measures would be both effective and acceptable to the community."The successful implementation of biometric systems is heavily dependent on the degree to which those using the systems are willing to accept the technology," it said.The report included a review of other research on the use of biometrics, which showed that Australians accept the use of biometrics for airport, workplace and other security purposes and to verify access to government services. But they are apprehensive about the use of biometrics for such purposes as marketing, accessing public transport or enrolling in educational institutions.In one survey, only 33 per cent said they would agree to have biometrics used for in-store retail offers and, in another, only 38 per cent said it was acceptable for Facebook to use facial recognition to help users identify people in photographs.However, 69 per cent said they would be willing to use biometrics to access their bank records.