All means are good for collecting data on your customers. And even, why not, without their knowledge.
We are starting to get used to regularly using facial recognition tools, whether to unlock a smartphone, open the smart home lock or receive specific alerts from a surveillance camera.
Technology has become so powerful and accessible that it can be used in many circumstances, and even… in places where we didn’t really want to see it.
Cookies in a vending machine, but not the ones you might expect
ATMs have been equipped with cameras for some time now, for obvious security reasons. But, would you expect to see them in a candy vending machine? Not really, and it would even be a dystopian vision worthy of a good old American novel from the 1940s, we’ll let you guess which one.
However, students at the University of Waterloo, not far from Toronto in Canada, recently experienced it. This is when one of the vending machines on campus started displaying an error message regarding “ Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe » that a facial recognition feature used by the machine was revealed.
If many pupils were quick to express their indignation, others wanted to know more, like River Stanley, editor for the university publication MathNEWS. He consulted the brochures of the company Invenda, which manufactures the dispenser in question, and confirmed the presence of such a system, “capable of providing an estimate of the age and sex” of each person who uses it.
But now, the students have highlighted a major problem: at no time, when using the machine, are they asked for their consent for such use of data. Even more, the presence of a camera does not seem to be explicitly indicated.
A feature that poses a problem, and for good reason
Adaria Vending Services, the company that operates the vending machine, told MathNEWS that the device complies with the GDPR, the European law protecting the confidentiality of personal data, renowned for being the strictest in the world. “ The technology acts as a motion sensor that detects faces, so the machine knows when to activate the shopping interface – without ever taking or storing images of customers », Specifies the company. “ Data acquisition is limited to evaluating the retailer’s traffic and transaction conversion rates. »
River Stanley points out, however, that a similar case gave rise to an investigation by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner several years ago. Cadillac Fairview, a shopping center operator, was singled out for having placed a similar system in some of its kiosks without the knowledge of its customers. Furthermore, it was revealed that the data thus collected from “ more than 5 million unwilling Canadians » had been scanned and stored in the company’s database, which was ultimately forced to delete everything.
Trust in vending machines is therefore low at the University of Waterloo, where post-its and chewing gum are used to obstruct their cameras. The students finally won their case, and the incriminated machines should be removed by the university in the more or less near future. The latter also declared to our colleagues thatArs Technica that she was not “ aware of the use of similar technology on campus “. Reassuring.
Source : Ars Technica
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