Note that unless you're explicitly blocking it — you're giving away much more information when you shop online than with facial recognition in a physical store.
Cash is one of the last remaining bastions of true transactional privacy (and of course, with some legwork and a warrant, law enforcement can connect the dots).
This is is the same thing that tends to bother me about people worrying about hackers spying on them via built-in webcam. Unless there's a very specific reason for it, they simply don't need to. Tracking your data/activity/input is easier and much more valuable.
Note that unless you're explicitly blocking it — you're giving away much more information when you shop online than with facial recognition in a physical store.
I'm not sure that's true -- cameras can track you around the store, seeing how long you linger at each product display, recording every time you reach out to touch a product. Which seems similar to the information online merchants can collect.
One thing they can collect in the store that they can't as easily track online (unless you're sending product links around) is who you are shopping with -- they can see that you come to the store with your friend, spouse, or children.
Google/Facebook and others know how long you look at a specific post/ad/video/etc and knows who you're with, even when in a private residence.
If you're in someone's house on their wifi network and they're shopping for socks... you might start seeing ads about socks. It's way easier to track this based on network information than creating facial recognition databases.
A lot of the "Facebook is listening to your conversation" fears stem from the fact that people don't realize that they can use data to make connections like this.
If you're remotely concerned about privacy, at the very least Facebook should not have an app on your phone (Google's doing it too).
This is absolutely an invasion of our privacy, tracking our every move, but is shopping online any better? The only real difference is that online they can't track your face, and in real life they can't link you to your taste in pornography.
Well, I wonder if they can link you to your taste in pornography? Facial recognition detects you keep showing up in the adult health aisle in Walmart every few weeks for condoms and lubrication. Also facial recognition noticed you spend 15% more time looking in the direction of other males verses females we predict there is a 74% chance that you are homosexual. I agree facial recognition is an invasion of privacy and seems to have all sorts of bad uses. I hope we as a society at least limit corporations from using it against us. I highly doubt we will stop the government from using it but we don't need Walmart tracking us.
I have wondered about this as well. Sometimes when entering Walmart I intentionally look way down as to try avoid any part of my face on their main camera. I know they have other cameras in the store but as a small for of protest I like to avoid that first cam.
> Though just not going outside is not a solution, we definitely need legislation for this.
Eh... should I remind you about NSA, CIA, FBI? Do you seriously trust the government with this tech? And even if you did, how do you think you'll regulate something anyone can download for free and run on their $50 computer?
Though just not going outside is not a solution, we definitely need legislation for this.