> In Just Walk Out-enabled stores, shoppers enter the store using a credit card. They don't need to download an app or create an Amazon account.
But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing Amazon to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and behavior detection.
> If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store and enter their email address.
Oh, and if you want a receipt, you'll have to give Amazon your email address, too, which allows them to more easily tie your real-world identity and activity to the profile they already have on you.
This sort of thing is a privacy disaster. I wouldn't set foot inside a store that does this.
> But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing Amazon to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and behavior detection.
Ha! They already have a decade of my purchase history from being a Prime customer and I shop using an Amazon Credit Card. They've got everything they need and I don't mind.
Few people would be bothered by something like this. If they would be bothered, we'd see bigger noise about grocery store loyalty programs which are basically to track purchases.
> we'd see bigger noise about grocery store loyalty programs which are basically to track purchases.
In my area, anyway, a huge outcry happened when these programs began to be adopted. Even now, eyeballing people checking out at the local shops, I'd say that only half of people (at most) are using loyalty cards. And many people I personally know who use loyalty cards do so in a manner to subvert the data collection (usually by having one loyalty card that is used by many people).
So it seems to me a substantial percentage of people really are bothered by them.
I don't use a loyalty card at any of the stores I shop at, and anecdotally, there's about a 50% chance that if I say "no" when the cashier asks if I have a card or want to create an account, I will later on discover that they've used a store code to give me the same discount.
This is without any prompting on my end, I never ask a cashier to do this for me.
So apparently it's common enough that some cashiers on-instinct just stick a store card in whenever someone says "no". It's common enough that none of them look at me surprised when I refuse.
Really you only have to use a (loyalty card, credit card) pair once for them to correlate all your purchases. But even then, I bet (store ID, name from credit card) is sufficiently unique in many cases to identify you.
Ah, something that tracks you based on appearance, and can later do so outside stores, is very different from a keychain fob that you can register with 555-867-5309.
I, for one, won’t ever go in an Amazon Go store. If other stores implement this tech without an opt-out, I will either start shopping in a ski mask or go without.
Just FYI, the local area code and Jenny's number (867-5309) is a default that exists for most loyalty programs. So if you don't want to be tracked you can use that. I've heard that this was implemented for military folks who tend to be a lot more transient than regular locals.
> So if you don't want to be tracked you can use that.
Or just not use anything at all. Or do what I do, and prefer shopping at stores that don't have a loyalty program. In my area, stores that have loyalty programs also have higher prices so that the "discount" from the loyalty card makes the price roughly the same as at similar stores that don't have a loyalty program.
So I go to the stores that don't have one. That's not only better for privacy, but is more frictionless and comes with no price penalty.
> Ah, something that tracks you based on appearance, and can later do so outside stores, is very different from a keychain fob that you can register with 555-867-5309.
That's a fair argument, but I think Amazon has enough about me that what you're suggesting is a minor concern relative to what they already have.
I'm much more concerned about my Amazon search history getting leaked as a .txt file than I am about Amazon using imagery of me to train their ML models.
> we'd see bigger noise about grocery store loyalty programs which are basically to track purchases
You'd be surprised how few people actually ever think about the motivations behind such loyalty programs. If you asked, they'd probably say it's good for the shop as it keeps us going to the place where we get discounts though these cards instead of the competitors (hence, "loyalty"). Most of them most definitely don't know how valuable that data is and how it can be used and for what purposes.
Not sure why you're harping so hard on the privacy front in regards to those statements. The quotes you've chosen (and the linked website) make no attempt to say that they are privacy related at all. The purpose of mentioning that they don't need to download an app or create an account are about mentioning the level of effort that patrons have to go through to sign up (as compared to current Amazon Go stores that do require an app and account).
If you want to talk about privacy, it's always a valid concern in this day and age, but your comment feels like you're building a strawman.
> The quotes you've chosen (and the linked website) make no attempt to say that they are privacy related at all.
I was pointing those out because of their obvious privacy implications, not because I thought that the article was presenting them as privacy-related.
> your comment feels like you're building a strawman.
How so? I was merely pointing out two of the several things the article said that got my spidey-senses tingling. I don't see how what I said is anything remotely like a strawman argument.
In your original comment, the statement "But you may as well" misses the entire point of the quote from the article. You only "may as well" if the only point of that quote is privacy related, but it is not. The benefit of not providing an account or downloading an app is that it provides less friction for the shopper, so you shouldn't "may as well" do it just because of an unrelated privacy side-note.
I was not commenting on the thing that the quote was intending to talk about. I was commenting on the privacy implications of what it actually said. From a privacy point of view, you may as well sign up for an account or install an app -- that's a problem for those of us who wouldn't sign up for an account or install an app due to security concerns.
> Exactly, and that's the definition of a strawman.
No, it's not. A strawman is when you are asserting that someone is making an argument they aren't making, so that you can knock down that argument rather than what they are really postulating.
I am not doing that. I haven't asserted that Amazon was making any sort of privacy argument here. I am the one making the privacy argument.
If I say that one way to improve early hand-eye coordination is to give all preschoolers loaded guns, and you tell me that the implications of giving all preschoolers loaded guns is that they will kill each other, that's not a strawman. You're just pointing out that my solution has problems.
I can't come back at you and say, "but I wasn't talking about mortality rates, I was just talking about hand-eye coordination. Your objection is irrelevant to my point."
Similarly, when Amazon makes a statement that using credit cards linked to email is a good way to get around making an Amazon account, and JohnFen correctly asserts that this does nothing for privacy whatsoever, and that Amazon will still make ghost tracking accounts for every shopper, that's not a strawman. They're just pointing out that Amazon's solution doesn't solve the problem.
The reason we don't want accounts isn't because making them is too hard or because we don't own smartphones -- it's explicitly because of the tracking. It's not a convenience problem; using a credit card and a smartphone are both equally convenient for most people.
Amazon is saying, "tell the people who are worried about making accounts that they don't need to, so it's fine." JohnFen is replying, "that doesn't address the reason people like me are worried about making an account."
It absolutely is not the definition of a strawman.
Reading between the lines of marketing (or any text, really) is an important element of critical thinking. There's no rule that says I have to only talk about what your commercial wants me to talk about.
Are you really suggesting we should just uncritically nod along with whatever facile ideas are fed to us by an advert? <-- (Psst...this is actually a strawman)
"A straw man (or strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent."
Saying "but you may as well" gives the impression that you refuted the point the quote was making, but in reality you were refuting a point that, by your own admission, the quote was not making. That is a strawman.
Reading between the lines of a commercial is fine, and encouraged. Dismissing the point of the commercial entirely because of a semi-related tangent is not.
If you meant it differently (perhaps not to dismiss the quote's "argument" but instead to just bring up the privacy implications separately) that's great and I'll take your word for it (and even agree with it), I just found your original quote to be saying something different.
edit: I see that you are not the original poster of the comment. This comment was meant for that person, not you. Apologies.
Agreed; it's hard to execute trade in a society without abiding by the norms of the society regarding information exchange. I could also try walking into the 7-11 with a full face mask on (in my state at least, that's not illegal in general), but the owner and register operator really wouldn't appreciate me being that anti-social.
Privacy is a sliding scale and different people set the slider at different sensitivity levels.
And even if one's sensitivity level is high enough to cause personal problems, they're solvable. People that deeply concerned about their privacy have had proxy shoppers buy things on their behalf.
> This sort of thing is a privacy disaster. I wouldn't set foot inside a store that does this.
If they make it accessible enough, all stores may. Even if they don't, I imagine all stores will have something similar in some timeframe. So.. what will you do then?
> If they make it accessible enough, all stores may.
I think that's unlikely. There is likely to be a large enough percentage of shoppers who avoid this sort of thing to support at least a couple of stores who make it a selling point that they don't do this.
But, if there is no option then I'll have to figure out what my response will be. It would likely have to be a compromise position between buying as much as I can without involving a store at all (buy produce directly from farmers, do a lot more bartering with neighbors, etc.) and employing single-use credit cards when I can't avoid the store.
I really don't think there is. I think this is going to be more like the loyalty cards - at first people oppose it on principle, but it becomes so commonplace that opposing it seems absurd
> I think this is going to be more like the loyalty cards
That would be OK, actually -- there are still plenty of stores that don't use loyalty cards.
The difference between the two things, though, are that you can shop at a store that has loyalty cards without having to use them yourself. You couldn't shop at a store that uses this program without using the program yourself.
> the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and behavior detection.
this already exists in nearly every retail store already. full of cameras and for advertising purposes they have been building profiles on people for decades
Not in most (all?) online shopping scenarios, and I don't really see any uproar about privacy concerns with those.
AFAIK many retailers (Target, for example) use an identifier derived from your CC number and don't even need your email or phone number to build a profile on you.
I totally agree with being concerned about your privacy, but I don't understand the increased harshness on this service specifically as opposed to the already-pervasive services that already collect your data on a daily basis. Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to hate on them?
>But this is real-life shopping, not online. Online shopping is 100% optional. Real-life shopping is not.
What? Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to go shopping? I don't understand this statement. "Real-life shopping" is just as optional as online shopping is. Hell, "real-life shopping" is more optional in this regard because you can always pay with cash and escape the aforementioned privacy concerns. You can't do that online.
I would guess even in these amazon stores you'll have the option to print a paper receipt right away.
There are probably laws requiring it in some places round the world, there are probably customers who want it, it speeds up the process by not requiring an email address to be typed in, and the total cost of a receipt printer is tiny.
No, but it removes the choice of paying via cash as part of your privacy defense strategy. Some of us don't pay with credit cards and never have receipts emailed, because of the obvious privacy issues involved.
It depends on what I'm buying. I do pay by card sometimes if the amount exceeds a certain level, or if it's an urgent situation. Otherwise, it's cash. It doesn't take that much dedication -- cash is not that inconvenient.
What it gets me is a few less entries in the databases of the store, credit card companies, and the marketers who buy credit card information. Every little bit helps!
Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system in order to automatically track your selections?
If anything it's full disclosure high level surveillance. I imagine big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart already have sophisticated surveillance systems that attach your card info to visual surveillance systems for Loss Prevention. I've heard of people who were repeat shoplifters at Wal-Mart that eventually got caught; and when they did, Wal-Mart had essentially a running tab of all the things they had ever shoplifted and slammed them with a grand theft charge despite the fact the time they got caught they were only attempting to shoplift a $5 bottle of shampoo or something.
I'm not denying the privacy disaster you're worried about, but honestly I think we're already too far gone down this road to be able to do anything about it.
> Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system in order to automatically track your selections?
True, I was being a touch aggressive in calling it "spying". However, if this sort of thing becomes so ubiquitous that its impossible to avoid, then it is 100% spying even if fully disclosed.
The difference between data collection being "spying" or not is one of voluntary, informed consent. If every store uses something like this, voluntary consent is no longer possible, and this would absolutely qualify as spying.
> Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system in order to automatically track your selections?
Very few people going into retail stores understand the extent of the tracking going on. So yes, to the average person, this seems like creepy stalking and/or spying.
Privacy is thrown out the window, but for the most part it already is. I shop on Amazon regularly. What interesting new information are they gleaning about me that they don't already have?
But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing Amazon to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and behavior detection.
> If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store and enter their email address.
Oh, and if you want a receipt, you'll have to give Amazon your email address, too, which allows them to more easily tie your real-world identity and activity to the profile they already have on you.
This sort of thing is a privacy disaster. I wouldn't set foot inside a store that does this.