dyauspitr 4 days ago

A grainy image of your palm from a surveillance camera capture is not going to expose biometric data. Your hand needs to be close enough to make out the detail required. Then tying that to your identity is very hard and takes manhours, not something you can replicate at scale. You’re giving them your palm print/vein scan tied to your identity on a plate. It’s very irresponsible.

  • ceejayoz 4 days ago

    > A grainy image of your palm

    I really doubt getting a reasonably good image of my hand is tough for Amazon. But they don't really need my palm at all; most of the point of that was probably that it'd be much freakier to normies if the self-checkout just said "hi Bob!" when you got close via facial recognition.

    > Then tying that to your identity is very hard and takes manhours…

    That seems deeply unlikely. I'm probably on 50 different cameras at a Whole Foods, some of which I'd never notice, and at some point I have to check out, which ties all that footage to a credit card and my Prime account if I don't want to pay the non-deal prices for everything.

    • dyauspitr 4 days ago

      Faces are easier to change. Grow a beard, wear some glasses, put on some weight or some surgery if you really need to. Can’t change your eye print, finder prints, vein pattern or DNA.

      • ceejayoz 4 days ago

        That's not really been the case for years now.

        Apple's FaceID can figure out who you are even with a N95 mask and sunglasses on.

        And in most scenarios, you're gonna a) pay with a card with your name on it and b) head out to your car with its unique ID prominently displayed on it.

lxgr 4 days ago

Isn't it a deep vein scanner? Much harder to spoof than still images or even video.

  • kotaKat 4 days ago

    Nope, just a normal camera + a lot of infrared light.

    Even modern fingerprint capture can be done with just a phone camera (but that’s also a feature of Amazon One’s enrollment process - you use your own phone to take photos of your palms, then they’re verified on the entry tower and matched up.)