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Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

blog.aboutamazon.com

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Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#111

Post by strawberrypuree »

n_t wrote: post #35
nafizh wrote: post #30

'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?

I think they are saying that humans cannot associate palm prints to an individual, unlike face (or even eyes in certain cases). It's just security by obscurity kind of thing but yes, not very convincing argument for privacy.

This is a sleight of hand on Amazon's part. Humans looking at a palm print and identifying the person is not a concern, it's computers looking at a palm, associating it with a credit card, which can then open up a trove of behavioral data to push (i.e., ads) to people. It's disingenuous, like putting someone in a tiger cage and saying "Don't worry, there's no way you can drown in here -- we made sure there's no water."

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#112

Post by ryanjm33 »

silentsea90 wrote: post #107
underyx wrote: post #6

At this point I feel like products are named One when the product manager and marketing people are having a bad day and want to just be done with the naming discussions already.

X and One fall in this category. They sound cool and could be any Amazon product under the sun. The problem though is the next iteration ie X2, X3 etc sound fine but One 2 sounds weird

And adding + to the name

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#114

Post by DharmaPolice »

This is a little off-topic but can someone explain why some companies are hosting official content on domains that are similar to their real domains but not their actual domain? e.g. AboutAmazon.com or tescogiftcards.com - at first glance they look fake and it's additional step to verify they are actually affiliated with the company.

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#115

Post by filoleg »

ragona wrote: post #78
ctvo wrote: post #68

This 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.

What I think is interesting is that I suspect they’ll eagerly license this to competitor stores. A palm reader does not turn your local Safeway into Amazon Go, and they know that. Having a slice of every point of sale could be huge; imagine how much better this is than having to use FaceID during a pandemic. (Tap tap, pin, pin, tap is a LOT more friction than “hover.”) I’d pay for it if I ran a retail store. I wonder…

>What I think is interesting is that I suspect they’ll eagerly license this to competitor stores.

According to the source article, your prediction is on point. Here are the relevant quotes:

>"Do you have any third-party customers who plan to use Amazon One?"

>We’re excited to see Amazon One in more retail environments and are in active discussions with several potential customers, but beyond that, we’ll have to ask you to stay tuned.

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#116

Post by jedberg »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #114

This is a little off-topic but can someone explain why some companies are hosting official content on domains that are similar to their real domains but not their actual domain? e.g. AboutAmazon.com or tescogiftcards.com - at first glance they look fake and it's additional step to verify they are actually affiliated with the company.

Usually this happens because a totally different departments runs the marketing site, and it's just easier to have their own deployment than integrate to the main site. In some cases it's a hosted CMS.

Another reason is for cookie management. This way your cookies aren't sent to the marketing site.

I'm not sure why Amazon does it though, as I think they're big enough to run their own CMS and therefore the cookie thing isn't really an issue.

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#117

Post by ncr100 »

karmasimida wrote: post #113

Not going to offer my biometrics this easily lol But good try

To me this is creepy. I am sure to "evolve" my thinking on it, but:

I might consider cutting an artificial hand off a silicone doll and registering its hand print.

Carrying a necklace of dismembered hands might creep out the store attendees & shoppers though.

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#118

Post by ncr100 »

yalogin wrote: post #74

So far what Apple and other companies did is to keep the biometric auth tied to the device and not let leak out. Now Amazon is saying leaking it is the feature. They are using the hand as the identifier, so the biometric id is what is used to identify a person, not an email address, not a random number or a handle. The biometric data that cannot be changed ever is the identifier. It's very troubling. - The privacy an…

> tied to the device and not let leak out

there are laws against facial recognition (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-becomes-the-first...)

how is palm recognition different from facial, aside from scanner proximity?

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#119

Post by thebean11 »

hammock wrote: post #89
ragona wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think is interesting is that I suspect they’ll eagerly license this to competitor stores. A palm reader does not turn your local Safeway into Amazon Go, and they know that. Having a slice of every point of sale could be huge; imagine how much better this is than having to use FaceID during a pandemic. (Tap tap, pin, pin, tap is a LOT more friction than “hover.”) I’d pay for it if I ran a retail store. I wonder…

The biggest competitors will never license something like this. They'd be basically giving (or creating an untenable risk of giving) their customer data over to Amazon. "But AWS etc etc.." Trust me, the retail landscape is very different. Source: I work in it

For big chains I agree, but if they can make this palm reader cheap enough and include a normal card reader (why not?) it could easily be a Square/Stripe POS competitor.

Re: Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

#120

Post by hypersoar »

ncr100 wrote: post #118
yalogin wrote: post #74

So far what Apple and other companies did is to keep the biometric auth tied to the device and not let leak out. Now Amazon is saying leaking it is the feature. They are using the hand as the identifier, so the biometric id is what is used to identify a person, not an email address, not a random number or a handle. The biometric data that cannot be changed ever is the identifier. It's very troubling. - The privacy an…

> tied to the device and not let leak out there are laws against facial recognition ( https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-becomes-the-first... ) how is palm recognition different from facial, aside from scanner proximity?

Off the top of my head: cameras are, and will remain, a lot more common than palm scanners.
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