My college uses these to control entrance to the dining halls. The technology has been around for years and it works consistently and effectively. They want you to think this is something highly innovative but I’m pretty sure they’re just licensing already existing palm scanners.
Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
61–70 of 151 posts
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#62'One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.' Umm, if this is true, how are you identifying the person then?
The camera is just one of many signals, some of which do change over time
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#63I still don’t get it: why would you choose something that’s so hard to change, if ever, for a store ID? It’s convenient but is it secure? There are photos of me waving with my palms out...
The photo of your palms out doesn't include an image of your veins because it wasn't taken with an infrared camera.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#64Coupling un-alienable, (purposefully) unchangeable biological marks to any account is always horrible idea. And not just the privacy part, for one, it can (only) be unwillingly altered (eg. by an accident), the same way as fingerprints, so a secondary backup code is needed anyway, making the whole setup a bad sort of convenience feature. The proper solution would be a safe hardware key mechanism.
Why not offer both?
You can already enter these stores using your phone.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#65'One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.' Umm, if this is true, how are you identifying the person then?
The wording of that is odd.
But my guess is, your face could be identified wether or not you are using this particular system. But your palm only works after the system does the scan of you so you have to specifically opt in to use it.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#66I still don’t get it: why would you choose something that’s so hard to change, if ever, for a store ID? It’s convenient but is it secure? There are photos of me waving with my palms out...
Do you really think this is a photo of your palm they're storing?
No doubt there are 3D scanners (to map the elevation of your palms, the depth of the lines, etc.), infrared imaging and a slew of other minor sensors. To make this fast, they need to effectively correlate enough of the data to identify you without relying solely on a single thing.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#67> We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. I'm sure the main one was that people associate fingerprints with being arrested, but maybe they could trick people into volunteering to be constantly fingerprinted by a private company if they just used a different part of the hand.
From the FAQ, it seems like this is not as invasive as fingerprints: "We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm."
Hahahaha, my interpretation of this is that palm prints are proprietary and require less widely available technology to make use of them.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#68This is a continuation of Amazon's remove all inconvenience strategy. And it'll work.
You're waving your hand and walking through now, no more scanning, no more opening up an app, no more tinkering with your phone. By chipping away at each of these friction points, no manner how minor, their moat grows and customers will notice a difference between an Amazon retail store vs. a competitor's.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#69'One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.' Umm, if this is true, how are you identifying the person then?
We should read the opposite of what they're saying to be true: they already have our fingerprints, and they want the rest of our hands.
Hate to go that way but I was thinking this. What's worse is that it is uploaded to some server somewhere instead of being kept localized.
Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go
#70Terrible naming aside, the onslaught of biometrics everywhere is very concerning.
I recently attended a scientific conference on biometrics (I'm not from the field) and it was shocking to learn about all that stuff, both what's going on in the research community as well as on the law makers' side of things.
> as well as on the law makers' side of things.
Anything you're allowed to share?