Tesco to scan your face

Yes, but perhaps a bit more than just embarrassing it you buy those to use together

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/teengirls/Pages/condoms.aspx

 

As has been said, the annoying part is not just the targeted advertising aspect, which goes on all the time, but the logical progression, and the lies.

No data will be collected? Then it has no value to the business so there's no point them spending £millions on it.

 

It's not so much the advertising Scrungee but the fact they are scanning our faces.......for future use? It's not on!

 

But the NSA is collecting details of everything you do.

 

You're missing my point Scrungee. I don't see why a shop should be allowed to do this....it's a shop for goodness sake not NSA!

 

Sorry, just testing the highlight to quote thing, not used it before.

 

Yep, that's working for me Scrunge

 

Yep, that's working for me Scrunge
Not working for me either.

 

This time it is

 

So what makes it OK for the NSA to monitor what we buy at Tescos, but not for Tesco to monitor what we buy at Tescos?

 

I'll just be showing the camera a photocopy of HRH's face and see what she's offered! Actually, a whole range of photocopies is a plan - Chewbacca, Kreighton, John Merrick, a pope or two, Lady Gaga (that'll probably blow the program!) and Julian Clary spring to mind!

I'm another who browses ad free thanks to AdBlocker! I turned it off for ten minutes a few weeks ago to remind me how much I love it!

Me too, although as I have delusions of grandeur I should add Waitrose to that list!

Sometimes I have to highlight in a downward direction, other times upwards, and other times click off the highlighted area to bring up the quote me box. But one way or the other it does work

 

There's a shock! I saw something at a "new reduced price" - it was a penny cheaper!

 

There is nothing wrong with Tesco monitoring what we buy. They have to do such things to remain competitive.

What is wrong is profiling people based on their appearance, and worse, tracking where you are and when. As it stands at the moment, we have the option to pay cash. That means Tesco gets their sales data, without being able to collect any specific data about who it was that made the purchase.

The face scanning thing is wrong on several levels. Firstly, as I and others have commented already, it is just the start. It is inevitable that as the technology improves, they will collect more and more detailed info about our movements. That is a certainty. I develop software for a living, and I know that in that industry, if you stand still, you get overtaken very quickly, so it is a constant effort to remain one step ahead. I have also worked in the IT side of the marketing world, so am quite familiar with what sort of data is collected and how. None of it is matched to a person. Sure it has your name and address and what you bought and everything else, but it's not matched to you personally. Currently, if I let my wife take my debit card as I often do, the transactions she makes will appear as though it was I that made them. There are marketing firms out there that believe I buy girlie products. Start matching it to a face and you instantly have detailed data on the actual person, and not just their debit/club card.

More than that, it is wrong because it makes assumptions based on appearance. All you are, everything you've become after years of living your life and gaining experience and having an opinion is reduced down to assumptions made by a piece of software judging you by your face. Imagine the very real negative effects it will have if, say, you get ads targeted at you that are meant for a person of the opposite sex, 20 years older than you. What about the self esteem of younger people. They're always judging themselves as it is. Imagine being a teenage girl worried about how she compares aesthetically to her peers, and she gets a targeted ad for men's shaving foam, right when her mates are there. That's not as daft as it sounds. This technology is in its infancy, it will get it wrong some of the time.

So what next? What about when Tesco realise that if it can judge your age (85% of the time) then it can be used to promote or authorise the purchase of age related products? No more need for the handful of bored staff manning the shop in the night when the drunks come in trying to buy a few extra cans of stella. You're 15 but you know how to trick the machine into thinking you're 20. Or your 40 but the machine says you can't have that 4 pack of John Smiths because you're only a minor.

They're not doing that in the first release, but note in the article that while they say they're not doing that, they don't say they're not going to, and it is the logical progression from an IT perspective, not from the perspective of those that write the code, who will say its a daft idea because its not reliable enough, but from a management perspective who see software license fees as considerably lower than salaries.