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Purchases being private (lemmy.today)

submitted 3 weeks ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/casualconversation@piefed.social

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I just went to get a sandwich. The ordering is (optionally) done via kiosk. This time, the kiosk started suggesting items for me based on what I'd purchased before. I was initially puzzled as to how it could recognize me prior to any identifying information being input, then realized that there was a small camera embedded in the kiosk, and that it must have done facial recognition.

Identifying customers isn't new; I understand that facial recognition has been used by grocery stores for loss prevention, to help flag people likely to steal things. But I wasn't aware that it'd reached the point of sticking all purchases into a database, regardless of the usual methods to obtain a unique identifier, like loyalty cards or obtaining a phone number.

Assuming that this becomes the norm, short of wearing a mask

which is a pain, and runs into anti-masking laws in some areas

I don't see how one can realistically avoid having all of one's purchasing being placed into a store's database for data-mining. That kind of bugs me

I'd like to be able to do stuff like purchase a sandwich without having the store profile me.

Thoughts? Ways to counter it? Okay with this/not okay?

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[–] hexonxonx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 weeks ago

It's likely your phone, specifically Apple, Google, or Facebook location services. A bluetooth beacon in the vending machine gets the identity anyone standing near (and everyone walking by!) directly from any number of advertising vendors, including the big three scumbags mentioned. Even if the identity code is "anonymous", the machine knows it's you because it's the same "anonymous" code as last time -- so not really anonymous and easily demasked with enough datapoints.

Could be facial recognition too, but the above method has been used for more than a decade now and is everywhere since it's built in to all ecommerce platforms.

If it is facial recognition then it probably just stores datapoints like the distance between your eyes (etc...) and doesn't know who "you" are until you pay with a card.

I think all of the marketing and advertising industry is bullshit. It's manipulation and propaganda made to appear normal and proper. If it all suddenly went away nothing would happen other than a mad scramble for jobs and alternate revenue sources.