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Customer surveillance in stores: Wired

Kari

Veteran

New customer tracking and facial recognition technology in stores: https://www.wired.com/story/to.....-134620121

”RetailNext says the traffic analysis cameras used in Toys “R” Us stores are designed to intentionally blur faces, in order to prevent individual shoppers from being identified. But that’s not the case for every camera it offers. “Some retailers do collect demographic data through sensors mounted at angles to collect facial imagery,” says Hartjen. These cameras use artificial intelligence to estimate a person’s age and gender, which is then aggregated into general statistics (it’s not clear how they might assess someone who is transgender or nonbinary).”

”Retailers don’t need fancy cameras to find out who you are—they can just use your cellphone. Stores have used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology to detect nearby devices for at least several years. Some even offer personalized digital coupons to shoppers once they enter a store. By tracking phones, companies can collect information like how long customers spend in each aisle or what parts of the store they’re drawn to the most.”

“There is no distinction between offline and online,” says Turow. “In the world as it’s evolving, we should be realizing that marketing surveillance is taking place in every physical and virtual area that we inhabit.”

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18 replies

Latest reply was from Gaylene

rachylou

Veteran

Yasss... I went on to the Whole Foods site, wondering if the local store might have quinces... immediately a thing popped up, asking me if I was in store with some kind of QR scan code...

Laura (rhubarbgirl)

(website)

Veteran

The bookstore that I currently work in recently installed a customer counter camera by the front door. Don’t think it does facial recognition that I know of, though.

Suz

(website)

Veteran

Wow. It's amazing and kind of scary. So how do so many people still get away with shoplifting, I wonder?

Anonymous

Scary, this is too invasive. I don’t want free coupons for tracking me, too many potential problems from this and people can use it to stalk customers.

Kari

Veteran

I know years ago I was surprised when I drove on a street near a mall (I wasn’t going there) and a pop up on my phone told me how many items in my Nordstrom shopping cart were in the store nearby!

rachylou

Veteran

Oh that’s creepy Kari!

Suz, I think people get away with shoplifting because it’s not worth the danger to go after them. There’s a video on the net going around of some seriously brazen shoplifting at a nearby mall. They took STACKS of clothing. But it’s a mall with shoot outs. I wouldn’t go after ‘em...

Jaime

(website)

Veteran

Not surprised. To give you a view into my twisted mind: I feel the more data they collect the less significant my little speck is in the big picture. Because they have already collected more than we could fathom.

Echo

Veteran

Every time people hear about things like this, they're outraged, but they want things both ways.

People put every detail of their lives on social media, but they can't believe when social media collects the information they willingly give it. They want their phones to know exactly where they are and to tell them how to get to the next place they want to go, but they're offended if anyone ELSE knows where they are. They want their phones to recommend a restaurant nearby or find them a gas station, but if the phone suggests it without prompting they think it's invasive. They want their phones to listen to their voices when they want them to, but g*d forbid if the phone listens when they DON'T want it to. They want to be able to pre-order groceries and have Amazon deliver everything to them in 1 day, but they're outraged when the grocer or Amazon are able to predict what they might want before they order it next time.

We can't have it both ways. If our technology is going to do everything we want it to do, we have to accept that some of those things will be detectable and trackable by others (on WiFi, for example).

Kari

Veteran

It is a whole other level, though, when simply by entering a store, your face is potentially tracked and collected! (Especially when you may not know or have to be notified that a store is using such technology.)

rachylou

Veteran

I guess the thing is... do you want your phone to figure out you have cancer and make that info available to potential employers? And if you don’t, do you have to forego a phone and therefore employment? I think we’re at that stage.

Bijou

Veteran

Shevia - I am with you! My husband and I joke that we are way too boring for our Google Home to really report anything meaningful about us. I think in many countries they obtain biometric data upon entry so that if a crime is committed the culprit can be tracked. Whilst on one hand I don't like the potential invasion of privacy, given I have no intention of doing something wrong, at least it makes the streets a bit safer.

Kari

Veteran

I’d definitely recommend reading the whole article. This is primarily about actual stores, not online shopping, and it’s about way more than theft prevention. It’s about collecting customer browsing and shopping data IN stores, not just online, to get the same kind of information.

Jenni NZ

Veteran

I did read the whole article Kari, thank you for posting it. I have a certain similar feeling to Shevia and Bijou in a way. The other thing that puzzles me is that *I* don’t always know what I want, so how could a store? I mean sure, the grocery store yes, we are fairly brand loyal as a family but we do sometimes like to try new things? And my clothing taste is both fairly eclectic plus pretty wide-ranging in the different stores I may shop in.
We just spent a huge amount of time deciding on some new baubles for the Christmas tree! We researched both online and in stores, and 3 of us (myself, DH and DS) all talked about what we were trying to achieve and finally decided on the sort, had to visit 2 branches of a store today since where I saw them on Wednesday, and photographed them to discuss, when I went back, they were all gone! Luckily DH was near a different branch but found them hard to find and had to ask.
I find it hard to see how a store could have figured out what we were going to do.

rachylou

Veteran

Y’all see the thing about how kids can unlock their parents’ phones that use facial recognition... because they look so much alike? I do feel we should be concerned how our data is used against us. Pushing product at you is one thing; being turned into the product is quite another.

Janet

(website)

Veteran

The genie is out of the bottle. As echo says, so much data has already been collected on us, you have no idea how it’s being used. Retail is the tip of the iceberg — read up in Cambridge Analytica or just watch The Great Hack if you haven’t already. We are most certainly being not only marketed to but manipulated in some very disturbing ways. Clearly we are participating by posting in public online spaces, but reaching into the offline world seems to be another step down a path that could have really far-reaching implications for personal freedom, if for instance our democratic societal structure is challenged. Yeah. Thought-provoking times we live in.

kkards

Veteran

sorry, but all you need to do is look back at the way they zero'ed in on the bombers from the Boston Marathon to know that we are easly trackable. (and remember that they used primarly private video)

for those who are iphone users, you can control some of your trackablity by controling who can access bluetooth in your apps.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/.....ature-apps

Anonymous

Isn’t there a law that stores must advertise they are tracking shoppers using this facial recognition? I feel like they can’t do this without some warning or sign posted up at the store, and if so where would it be located?
More people should be made aware of this before shopping and as long as something is posted then the store is allowed to do this.

If you’ve seen the movie Eagle Eye this is exactly like that.

Gaylene

Veteran

Put me down as another who gets worried about how easy it is to get people to give up personal information these days. Maybe before docilely accepting the collection of demographic information, we should be asking WHY a retailer, organization, or state is willing to invest millions in collecting this kind of data. What is the return on the investment? And maybe spending some time on digging below the surface response is also warranted.

Until I understand why my personal information is of interest, I’d just as soon not volunteer it. As someone who has no particular skills in this area, I’m astonished how easy it is for me to put together a rather comprehensive profile of a person I’ve never met just by spending a hour digging around at a computer. Court records, personal health data, family life, real estate, education, ancestry, political views, and location is dead easy. I may not care about your toilet paper buying habits, but that’s just an entry point for a researcher.

My research methods, though, are totally old school. Facial recognition would spit out that kind of data in a micro second, plus let me extend it to family members as well as comprehensively tracking your movements going backwards in time. And I’m a total novice working from a home laptop.