Amazon is bringing palm-scanning payment system to Whole Foods stores
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
If you think we've faced some goofy religion-driven complaints about stuff in the past, wait until that crowd finds out Jeff Bezos wants them to buy his stuff with the Mark of the Beast (which is how they'll describe it). People will lose their minds about this. I am completely serious.
Even if the idea of the payment system itself has merit, I predict a terribly chilly cultural reception to the idea.
I imagine the overlap between Whole Foods customers and this lot is sparse.
If anything, it sounds like a great opportunity for free marketing.
But don't for a second believe that the "Satan is coming for us any moment now" crowd doesn't have an awful lot of money and power. I'm not describing a tiny pocket of people who eschew physical possessions, but a rather large portion of the US.
Right? I'd shop at Satan's grocery store.
[0] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-by-evangelical...
Its confusing to me at least because it’s not like Whole Foods has direct competition for high end food stuffs in most markets I’ve seen.
I know a handful of these types people and they are more likely than average to only buy the best foods, with Whole Foods being their major retailer of choice.
Regardless, I'd challenge this assumption.
Personal source: I was raised in the Midwest and attended Southern Baptist (i.e. mainstream evangelical) churches during my upbringing. I was taught that these things are literally true many, many times over the years. I'm not trying to make fun of Christians, Midwesterners, or Southerners, or anything remotely like that. But I am saying that I have personally been told that the Biblical book of Revelations is a set of literally true predictions about the near future.
Walk into any Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God church, find the preacher, and ask them if Revelations is a story of true things that are going to happen, and they're very likely to say that yes, it is. Tell them you heard some guy on the Internet say that the Mark of the Beast is a real thing. They're likely to nod and confirm that yeah, that's what the Bible says.
I'm not saying that everyone in those and other evangelical denominations believe this. I absolutely 100% contend that a whole awful lot of people sincerely do.
And again, let me be explicitly clear: I do not believe any of this. However, a lot of people genuinely do, right now, today.
Cashier security: "Sure.... Sorry Mr. Null (NULL), you will have to work this out with amazon."
Things like this are why it's so critical to have people with diverse backgrounds around you. Otherwise you tend not to know about significant cultural differences until it's too late.
It's fun to laugh at their constant stupidity, but also perfectly safe to ignore them from a political and economic standpoint.
Incidentally, there is a lot of scholarly support for the hypothesis that, in context, the forward-looking statements in the book of Revelation (and other New Testament texts) are largely or completely about first-century events (see topics such as preterism, covenant eschatology, full preterism, etc.).
Understanding documents that were written thousands of years ago, in a cultural and linguistic milieu far different than that of western civilization, is difficult for modern westerners. People ought to study more before jumping to outlandish conclusions about the meaning of such texts.
I look forward to it. Not saying it's the best strategic move by Amazon, but day by day i grow more tired of the fallout of christians.
Yea, maybe it's just fringe christians.. but if there are reasonable people in their ranks, they're happily silent. They happily co-exist with extremists, and the affect that's having on society is frustrating to me.
If they just lived their life and didn't try to bully everyone else into alignment with their beliefs i'd be more sympathetic. But the less they get special treatment these days the more "Anti christian" they claim everyone is. As if the secular population is out there attacking them. Equality seems persecution to them.
So just purely from a business point of view, Amazon needs to evaluate how much they're willing to annoy evangelicals. It's very possible they've run the numbers and decided they're OK with this for all the reasons you state and more. I think it's also at least a little possible that it simply hadn't occurred to them that some people might not like the idea for religious reasons. If they launched their new "Zeus the Deuce" product and suddenly a few people people rose up and started writing op-eds and organizing boycotts over it, I'd expect someone to be pretty surprised. I think this might be along those lines.
You can change your credit card. Change your bank. Change your name. And for the sheep who are so inclined, even change your underwear.
But you can't change your biometric data.
Now suppose some bad guy cuts off your hand at the wrist. They can then produce that bloody item at the POS terminal and use it to pay for goods. At this point you have just become the victim of a serious crime because you are now responsible for payment.
Changing your name does not change your credit history. Losing an illusory value you have never owned by adopting a new technology, that's not a real problem.
Then you would dispute the charge and have your own geolocation data or the store's video footage to substantiate your claim. This is a grocery store, not a diamond merchant.
If you happen to have attracted the attention of this master counterfeiter who has duplicated your palm you would simply have the option of not registering your new card with the system.
If this happens on a large scale, yes, the whole project is doomed.
If you find that someone has (somehow) managed to duplicate your palm print then you probably do not want to enroll with that option for payments in the future.
The issue is once your biometric data is compromised you have no recourse to regenerate it. Your solution is you just don't get to participate in these features anymore.
You're back in the same place you are already. If this putative palm print duplication technology becomes widely available then people will stop building technology that depends on palm prints.
As has been repeatedly pointed out, the risk lies with the merchants and the issuing banks (at least in the U.S.) for credit card payments.
EDIT: and, at least in the U.S. again, no-one is going to be able to force you to use this technology; there will always have to be an alternative mechanism because there are people with no hands, and a system that required them would be a massive ADA liability.
Like, it feels like the worst way to buy groceries.
The cases in Malaysia with the cut off thumbs to start a Mercedes make sense but for groceries the concept is outlandish.
At that point, you're just cutting off my hand for the sake of it.
They kidnap your spouse/child/parent and threaten to murder them unless you go through with the transaction. They hold a gun to your head while you transfer the contents of your bitcoin wallet to them. They beat you with a rubber hose until you give them your safe combination.
You'd probably even have an easier time proving your hand was stolen it since your hand is missing.
It's still a problem that if someone compromises your biometric data they'll have full access forever. In practice that isn't a huge problem because it's still really hard to do.
given the general attitudes towards privacy and biometric data here on HN, i honestly can't tell if people trying to pay for groceries with bloody severed limbs is a concern you legitimately have or if this is satire.
Comparing this system to, for instance a chip card reader, the palm print is significantly less secure because it uses a single factor (something you are) versus a chip which requires the customer to both have the card with the chip present for payment, and to know the PIN in order to authenticate. Or your phone for example, if someone steals your fingerprint (or even models your face), they still need to have your physical phone to unlock it. With this palm scanning tech, all you need is the palm and you can pay for anything anywhere because there's no secondary confirmation
There are numerous reports of people being locked out of their biometric accounts after an injury. If you burn yourself cooking and have a blister on your hand you may not be able to go buy first aid supplies at Whole Foods afterward. Alternatives are required.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/polit...
A phone which authenticates me based on my face or fingerprint and provides a signed request to the terminal is far superior in privacy and security. I never see the point in moving biometric authentication beyond the user device.
Even in the event that the signing keys are compromised and are used without the biometric check you can have a chance to rotate those keys and etc.
Devices with known problems with their biometric verification could be prevented from registering a new key.
Never should a company like amazon have access to the biometric data itself.
Perhaps that's exactly the purpose.
Edit: There's a patent from AMZN: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...