Why 1 in 4 Americans Are Willing to Give Their DNA to a Bank

For most Americans, the username-password security feature isn’t good enough anymore. A quarter of consumers said they’d share their DNA with their bank, if it meant greater security for their personal and financial information, according to a survey from Telstra, a telecommunications and information services company in Australia.

About two-thirds of Americans surveyed also said they would prefer their smartphones use biometrics (i.e. a fingerprint) as the gatekeeper of secure information.

The Telstra data is based on a survey of 318 financial services executives in Europe, the U.S. and the Asia Pacific region and 4,272 consumers in seven countries — it’s unclear what share of the responses came from the U.S. or what the margin of error is.

According to the data, more than half of U.S. consumers said security of their finances and personal information is their top priority when choosing a financial institution, over things like interest rates and ease of accessing funds, which are traditionally important considerations when choosing a bank. Given the increasing popularity of mobile banking — a recent report from Javelin Strategy & Research said only 17% of consumers prefer to visit a bank branch to access their checking accounts — it makes sense that consumers would want to know there’s more than a username and password between whoever is holding their phones and their financial information.

Biometric security includes things like voice, facial, fingerprint and iris recognition, ideally ensuring only you can access your bank account on the mobile device. Many of the newest smartphones are capable of biometric security, making the features seem within reach for financial institutions.

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Even if your banking app isn’t yet asking for your fingerprints, there are a lot of things you can do to increase your security. First, it’s a good idea to password-protect your phone, because your personal information isn’t limited to your banking app, and you don’t want anyone accessing that without your permission. On top of that, it’s crucial you look at information security from multiple angles: Monitor your bank accounts and credit information for signs of unauthorized activity, because despite your best efforts, it’s likely a fraudster will access and abuse your personal information at some point. As soon as you identify suspicious activity — for example, you’re checking your credit score and it dropped dozens of points for no reason you can think of — immediately investigate the problem. The sooner you alert your financial service providers and the credit reporting agency to unauthorized activity, the faster you’re likely to recover from any damage the fraudster caused. You can monitor your credit scores for free on Credit.com every month.