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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

I loathe WeWork, especially their 'photograph everybody that visits our building high res and up close and with the names attached to the record'. I stopped going there to visit companies after the first time they pulled that. Oh, and got into a tiff with a receptionist that insisted I not block the camera.

Here's to hoping they go bust.

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Wait - they take a photograph of your face at every building?

Yep. I would never ever house my company in a building where the landlord insists on high res pictures of my visitors being taken by their systems.

Isn't that frequently the case though? The number of times I've walked into a building and been captured by some security camera must be enormous. Maybe the resolution is lower, but 1.) that may not matter that much, they can still recognize/have a record of you and 2.) I'm sure security cameras get better over time and eventually that's going to be high res too.

As for the name<->picture mapping, many many buildings have a log book for visitors, doesn't take too much work to associate a name with video of who wrote in the book at that time.

My point is that it's quite likely you've already given out tons pictures of you to the locations you visit. We-work might be more explicit, but they're not unique.

There is a huge difference between a full-frontal face shot from a few cm away at 4K vs a frame shot on a CCTV system. Besides that the CCTV footage tends to get automatically wiped every so many days if there is no explicit reason to keep it but those WeWork mug shots will likely stay on file forever and quite possibly not in the country that you are in.

Yes and no. They use a guest registration system (on an iPad) that takes a photograph to send to the person who invited you on arrival so that your host knows who to look for in the shared space. You can simply choose not to stand in front of the camera (there’s a countdown) — it’s not mandatory, and certainly nobody would take issue with you opting out. I was a WeWork member for years and, as far as I know, the photos are only used in the emails to hosts.

Also it’s worth noting that the same systems are used by lots of companies, especially tech companies: they go as far as taking photos to print on temporary badges. Photos of guests is certainly not unique to WeWork, most startup offices I’ve visited do it.

I've been told very explicitly that opting out was 'not an option' and there was also zero information on what would be done with those photographs.

Isn't this kind of thing standard any time you visit e.g. a Google office, or a colocation facility?

Name is required at many places, but usually not a photo.

Not at google or apple. yes at facebook (predictably)

I'm almost positive I had my picture printed on a paper badge at both Google offices I visited, but they were so long ago I can't be 100% sure.

In Mountain view you only needed a name, and not even to show ID to prove it was real.

Source: 7.5 years of signing guests in to visit me

I've had my photo taken at sign in the large NYC office.

Many of these companies required you to agree to an absurd NDA which is extremely one sided... all for the benefit of attending a meeting they invited you to.

Getting your picture taken would be a much better deal.

How about neither?

I haven't seen this happen in a few Microsoft and Google offices across Europe

I’ve visited google a few times and never had my picture taken.

They definitely did it in NYC as of a few years ago

This was the building owner, not google. Once Google bought the building, the practice stopped.

Yes. That reason (amongst others) is why I would never rent space or do business in a WeWork facility.

This must surely be an obvious GDPR violation if it happens in Europe.

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