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'Facial recognition' error message on vending machine sparks concern at University of Waterloo
(kitchener.ctvnews.ca)
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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It gets worse :/
I looked up the brand (Invenda). Their PDF includes "using AI", "measuring foot traffic", and gathering "gender/age/etc" e.g. facial recognition to estimate a persons age and gender
And in terms of "stored locally" this is straight from their website
The marketing also so fricken backwards that it reads like satire:
I'm dreading for the day they introduce dynamic pricing based on who's buying and refuses to sell without a full face scan.
What really bothers me is the "measuring foot traffic". I already refuse to use vending-machines because of the pricing and unhealthyness, but you're telling me I need to make GDPR takedown requests just for walking to class?
Also this is data that any reasonable company could get in like half an hour of searching and asking.
There is data on how many meals are sold a day at the mensa, how many students are enrolled, how many students live on campus...
Unless the vending machine is in the last corner of the third floor of an half empty building, all this information can be puzzled together to get a good estimate of how many people are passing the machine on a day to day basis.
Fast food franchises always charge more in poor areas, I wonder if dynamic pricing would charge poor people more as well.
Got a source on this? I'd love to read more about that
@oxideseven Not offhand as it's more something I know from experience but here are some news reports on it from my part of the world:
Poorer pay more
McDonald's make meals different prices in different areas
And here's a study from the US that found they charge Black neighbourhoods more.
Edit: looks like chain stores do it with fresh fruit and vegetables too.
Thanks! This is some wild stuff.
Why does privacy matter?
Price discrimination!
Login to LinkedIn to purchase [groceries / diapers / your new mechanical keyboard] 🤢
Shut the fuck up, they can hear you!
Dynamic pricing already exists based on what device brand you use
Try that with me, and I'll unplug the fucker and cut the plug off.
People panic about face scan while the ongoing massive privacy breaches exist around online services and electronic devices. The amount of personal data that people pour into smartphones is enormous compared to using that vending machine. We need more GDPR.