Nine groups were against retailers being able to scan faces of shoppers and keep their information. However they have reached a brick wall at the moment and cannot get past it. The privacy groups have said that retailers should have to ask for permission before they are able to scan the faces of their customers. Retailers use the information to keep a track of their customers purchasing habits and track purchases along with gathering information from databases on which customers are listed, of other retailers. Along with using the information to offer customers special deals it seems they also want to identify potential criminals.
Alvaro Bedoya, a Georgetown University law professor is one of the people against facial scans and said that consumers should be asked before scans take place. However negotiations have been taking place for almost one and a half years and the retailers say they should not have to get permissions.
One of the biggest worries of the privacy groups against the technology is that people could be profiled and targeted. One company who has used facial recognition is Facebook and they have used it for categorizing and identifying pictures. Therefore they know which products people look at when they are online as they scan the cookies which come from the websites of retailers. They then use this information to send you product ads.
Another worry is hacking. Passwords and credit card numbers can easily be changed but you cannot change your face if it has been scanned. The privacy groups say that categorizing people based on their face isinvasive, even if that person isn’t named.
But how do you feel about it, would you mind if retailers scanned your face and kept it on file without you knowing?
