Ask Lemmy

You wanna be me so bad? Here's the keys, good luck, fucker.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1121/

Does my doppelgänger go to my workplace and do my job?

If he doesn’t, there’s your answer.

If he does, I’ll leave him to it and go read a book in the park.

Some years back I was in a D&D campaign where doppelgangers became a major ongoing concern. It turned out that in that case doppelgangers built up their image of the person they wanted to mimic through careful observation, but thanks to the general prudishness of society doppelgangers rarely ever caught glimpses of peoples' genitals. So we ultimately came up with the "crotch check" system. Doppelgangers usually couldn't form plausible genitalia.

Why must we be enemies? I want to be his friend.

You authenticate either with something that you have (physical key, for example), something that you know (passwor for example), or something that you are (biometrics, basically).

Dopplegangers rule out that last one, but the previous two still work fine

Simple. I kill my doppelgänger, if he wins he wanted it more.

Highlander rules.

I have a hardware key, that's probably secure enough. 128 bits of unique data.

Nice try, Doppelganger!

I'm already an identical twin and it's a nightmare even having a different first and middle name but same everything else.

I think we're just living with a second set of identical twins?

My doppelganger will provide PII before I do

Whichever one folds and tells you an actual identifying characteristic first is the fake

Same as I do now, passwords. Unless they inherited my memories, in which case who's to say I'm not the doppelganger?

Be too useless to merit a doppelganger. To paraphrase zhuangzi, few know the usefulness of uselessness.

Well, easy, I'm the one without the moustache.

Does my doppelganger have the same tastes as me? If not, then only the real me would walk around with Amy Rose and/or Sonamy (Sonic x Amy Rose) wallpapers on all his devices without the slightest hint of shame or embarrassment.

If he has the same taste, then we'll play SoulCalibur 3 together.

I would be signing all my communications cryptographically and sharing a key in person so people can validate whether a message not delivered face to face is really from me.

I'd sign a payload using my private key that my doppelganger doesn't have.

I'm the one who knows how to use Lemmy.

You mean like identical twins?

Secret handshake

• Does my doppelganger have the same knowledge I have, or just the same outward physical characteristics?

• Does my doppelganger possess the same physical objects I do, like an identical copy of a cell phone, say?

I had a different post that didn't really answer your question. A real answer is that it might not be as much of a problem as you might imagine. Biometric verification is really insecure: something like a 1% false positive rate for fingerprints.

Ideally people would just use passwords like back in the olden days. Longer strings are more secure than random characters.

Edit: should clarify this was for fingerprints unlocking an iphone

• fingerprints are not genetic, but are formed by the movement of the fetus in the womb. while they are not a reliable way to identify someone out of a general population (the likeness is about 1:10000; there have been wrongful convictions based off of fingerprint data) they can be used to differentiate two individuals.
• almost everyone has some insignificant scarring on the hands or face that's created after birth and which is tied to some stupid story about cutting cheese or whatever.
• everyone has some weird fetish. if you don't think your fetish is weird, it's because you're in company that shares it.