Amazon will pay you $10 in credit for your palm print biometrics. So how much is your palm print worth? If you ask Amazon, it’s about $10 in promotional credit if you enroll your palm prints in its checkout-free stores and link it to your Amazon account.
From a report: Last year, Amazon introduced its new biometric palm print scanners, Amazon One, so customers can pay for goods in some stores by waving their palm prints over one of these scanners. By February, the company expanded its palm scanners to other Amazon grocery, book, and 4-star stores across Seattle.
Amazon has since expanded its biometric scanning technology to its stores across the U.S., including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Texas. The retail and cloud giant says its palm scanning hardware “captures the minute characteristics of your palm — both surface-area details like lines and ridges as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns — to create your palm signature,” which is then stored in the cloud and used to confirm your identity when youâ(TM)re in one of its stores.
Amazon will pay you for your hand.
Now, literally, your hands gonna pay you. Amazon last year introduced biometric palm print scanners at its stores across the United States, including Amazon Go and Amazon Books. Now the company wants to entice customers to begin using the technology with a $10 promotional credit. All you have to do to earn the credit is enroll your palm print at one of its stores and link it to your Amazon account.
As the scanners are called, the idea with Amazon One is to make it even faster to zip through its stores, some of which are completely cashier-less. The technology varies by store, but Amazon Go locations use a series of cameras and weight sensors that identify what you take off a shelf. Then, your Amazon account is automatically billed for whatever items you leave the store with.
The retailing giant presents Amazon One as a “fast, convenient, contactless way for people to use their palm to enter, identify, and pay.” But critics say the technology is unnecessary, with similar benefits provided by contactless payment cards and a potential security risk.
Read Amazon is planning to offer a great thing.
“The advantage [of your palm print] is that it’s on you all the time, this isn’t something you can lose, but that’s also a disadvantage because you can never change it,” security researcher and University of Oxford academic Reuben Binns. “You can never change your palm like you change your password or other identification tokens.”
Many have expressed concerns about a company like Amazon, in particular collecting such data. The firm has been criticized in the past for pushing new technology in uncomfortable ways: selling biased facial recognition algorithms and aggressively expanding its network of police-connected home surveillance cameras.
It’s clear also that Amazon wants other businesses to use Amazon One as an identity service. This would potentially allow Amazon to track people around a greater variety of physical venues — not just shops but office buildings, stadiums, and the like.
It’s very simple (almost too simple). Just sign up at checkout at any Amazon store that uses the scanners, and then you’ll get a welcome text to sign in or create an Amazon account. Then Amazon will send you your $10 credit, and that will store your palm print in your account for future use.
The palm print scanner “captures the minute characteristics of your palm — both surface-area details like lines and ridges as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns — to create your palm signature,” which Amazon reportedly stores indefinitely or until you tell them to delete it.
