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Shops and retailers are taking over where street cameras left off, watching shoppers' every move.
According to a 2015 survey of 150 retail executives from IT services firm Computer Services Corporation, a quarter of all British shops and 59% of fashion retailers use facial recognition software. Such technology is vital as offline stores attempt to keep up with online retailers, said Duncan Mann, chief operating officer at retail analysis firm Hoxton Analytics. "Online retailers gather all kinds of information about shoppers and physical stores also want to understand how people behave in a shop," he said. But, he admits: "A lot of these technologies are kind of invasive."
Hoxton has come up with a novel way of measuring footfall - literally by filming people's shoes. Sherlock Holmes-like, its system can deduce a remarkable amount of information such as age, gender and social class of shoppers from their footwear. "We have cameras at about 50cm off the ground and it points down so it is less invasive than facial recognition," he explains. It is surprisingly accurate. It spots the correct gender 80% of the time, better than some facial recognition technologies, according to Mr Mann.
Looks like this tech will arrive just after Amazon has put them all out of business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @09:45AM (7 children)
My friends, is why I never go out on the town. Actually, I have little interest anyway in going out. But thankfully I live in a part of the USA that isn't heavily CCTV'd. So I'm not quite as worried -- yet.
Of course they say they never collect individual data. They have to.
My dad used to talk about all the things businesses want from us these days. They want to know when we wake up, when we sleep, what time we take a shit, how much we shit, when we eat, and how many times a day we have an erection. Anything and everything to ensure they can make a little bit more money off of us. And that lovely pairing of business and government that allows them to hone their profits will allow big brother to ensure that we're all being nice people.
Remember those days when people thought those who said the TV was watching us were thought to be schizophrenic? Now I guess we wish we'd paid more attention. Here we had modern day prophets all along, and we shipped them off for treatment at the hands of our wonderful psychiatric industry.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:26AM
In a way, its kinda funny how many hoops some businesses will jump through, how many ads they will try to force onto us, only to make terrible first impressions by presentation of "businesstalk" at first contact. Squirrely businesstalk that makes their company look like a gold-digger at a social.
Things like putting a large number on the screen.. like 3 payments of $33!
And wait! There's more! Buy NOW and we will send a second one FREE! That's right! You get TWO of these marvelous things for just three easy payments of 33 dollars!
Just as my excitement begins to build over getting one, I already have a figure of $99 in mind, accurate to the penny.
But the head does not stop there. It continues yammering. "Just pay additional fee"... as if its nothing. How much? Undefined!
Now, just how many times has that head hocked up "just pay additional fee"? How many additional fees, taxes, shipping, whatever are we talking? Head won't say. It wants me to call. I'll be damned to waste my time to call somebody who has already started this relationship off trying to trick me. By this time, I am simply pissed. I maybe make a note to look them up on the internet and yelp them, but by that time, the excitement of purchase has subsided, and reason has returned. Really, now, do I really want to initiate contact with that motormouth again? Will it be truthful with me or just present me with another spiel of businesstalk?
Wasn't it Nancy Pelosi who commented on having to pass the healthcare act so as to find out what was in it?
Am I going to have to buy one to find out how much it costs? Not only that, I can see the way they are talking and flashing stuff on and off the screen, I feel I have just been invited to a shell game. Savings! Savings! Savings! Twirl the cups! Quick! Which cup has the Savings! followed by Sucker! We got your money and you ain't getting it back - we did our thing and sent you something in a box. Are you gonna sue us? We are a Business! We have money! Your money! His money! Everyone's money!
I'm afraid after my mind gets in that rut, forget doing business.
Years of preparing a product for development and marketing. 60 seconds to have a television ad-head completely having the customer believe its a scammy shell-game.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:58PM (5 children)
all the things businesses want from us
We are in a spying bubble.
The worlds biggest advertising and information gathering company, google, is constantly sunsetting "free" data gathering applications because they can't make a profit off the most intimate imaginable data.
The desire for data is infinite because they're in the business of selling it for a profit but margins are slim to zero because no one wants to pay for any of the, frankly useless, spy data.
I admit right now I can't figure out for sure if we're in a notification/spam bubble WRT stuff that serves no purpose other than interrupting us or a spy bubble where everyone is certain if they just spy on us harder than everyone else then they'll find a way to make money although no one has so far.
Personally I think the "lets track little old lady shoppers" is just a SWPL politically correct cover for trying to catch criminals who are mostly in demographics we're not allowed to complain about. The faces they're tracking are not little old grannies for sales purposes but in the USA they are interested in tracking young black men for anti-shoplifting purposes.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:59PM (4 children)
I found it interesting that looking at shoes gave 80% correct gender determination, which they claim is better than facial recognition.
I can see where the jeans an tennis shoes croud might present a problem if all you could see was feet.
Bu I had no idea that FC had so much problem with gender determination.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @05:44PM (3 children)
No shoes, No surveillance.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 26 2017, @09:39PM (2 children)
No shoes, No surveillance.
More likely to make sure they use the correct bathroom, whichever that is defined as currently.
Odd they don't do a crotch or chest pix shot to determine gender. Probably an obesity issue, all spherical objects looking similar.
It is mystifying why they desperately need to know the gender. Given the desire to push labor rates ever lower I don't have useful interactions with staff so they must be doing some kind of weird statistical analysis work, I guess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:59PM (1 child)
Only women born women get pregnant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @05:24AM
> Only women born women get pregnant.
So far!
Also, that's not what GP meant by labour rates.