This thread demonstrates one thing clearly. (Folks may be a bit old and have outdated ideas).
Nobody seems to understand that there are only two real issues.- Identification - who are you?
- Authentication - you physically have some hard to copy mechanism for identification
An example of the first is something like a login / password combination - or in TV land, an Id number.
The second is often a
biometric device that matches only you - fingerprint reader, retinal scanner, etc. - or in The Villages - a physical card that is not allowed to be duplicated. That is a weak link here, but it would only be further weakened by allowing trivial lame*ss copies for authentication.
Don't complain. Fingerprint readers are cumbersome, expensive, and usually have batteries that need replacing. The rule is not there just to be a rule.
It is the rule because without it, impersonation is trivial as evidenced by all of the people in this thread who have been doing exactly what anybody could be doing to try to bypass authentication.