When a biometric device wrongly rejects a legitimate user, what is this error called?

• A. False Positive
• B. False Negative
• C. True Positive
• D. True Negative

Answer: (B)

In biometric authentication, there are two kinds of errors to watch for: false positives, where an unauthorized person is granted access, and false negatives, where a legitimate user is denied access. The error described—when a legitimate user is wrongly rejected by the system—is called a false negative. It means the system failed to recognize someone who should be authenticated, often due to factors like poor sample quality, changes in the user’s biometrics, enrollment issues, or a conservative matching threshold. To reduce this, you can improve enrollment quality, allow multiple authentication attempts, adjust thresholds, or add additional authentication factors. In short, this is the missed-recognition failure for an authorized user.