Patent attributes
A user can be authenticated to a mobile computing device using an authentication process that recognizes the user and verifies that an actual human being is attempting to be authenticated, in order to minimize the ability of another person to spoof the authentication process. A model of a user can be generated and stored in the cloud, enabling that model to be synchronized across various devices. A user accessing one of these devices can have infrared image information captured, which can be used with a facial recognition process, to recognize the user, and with a human verification process, to verify that the facial information corresponds to a human user. Various approaches such as visual analysis and thermal imaging can be used to verify that the human user being recognized is interactive with the device.