I wanted to know if my local Food Basics store is tracking me.
I looked at the privacy policy on foodbasics.ca and not finding any mention of this, but wanting to be sure, I emailed their Privacy Officer.
This is the email I sent:
Hello,
I shop at the food basics store at [Address] in [City],
I would like to know if you use facial recognition or identification technology in the store? And if so, for what purpose, and if the information is stored for how long?
Thank you,
[Me]
Here is the response I got:
Hello,
I confirm that Metro does not use facial recognition technology or any other technology that allows the identification of individual at the Food Basics stores.
Best regards
Eliane
Legal Counsel
Just want to share to encourage everyone to learn about and exercise your consumer privacy rights.
That’s great, except it’s a lie — if they use card readers, they’re using technology that allows the identification of an individual. This makes me question the veracity of the rest of the statement.
I’d bet the people working the registers recognize faces, too. Fuckin’ liars.
Wouldn’t that only be the identification of the cardholder? Not necessarily the individual using it.
https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-laws-in-canada/the-personal-information-protection-and-electronic-documents-act-pipeda/pipeda-compliance-help/pipeda-interpretation-bulletins/interpretations_02/
True, and they do use normal surveillance cameras too. Personally I am interested in facial recognition systems as I’ve seen the back-end of facial recognition systems in other retailers and it was incredibly creepy. They may not actually be keeping track of card #s the same way other stores do*, the biggest red flag in the statement to me is it doesn’t rule out more general demographics tracking tech, which is something I don’t think is covered by the legislation. There may be a little bit of a language barrier in this exchange as well. But I think most people aren’t very aware of even what privacy laws exist, compared to eg. the GDPR which is quite common to hear about online.
*(I want to try something similar for Mark’s since they can be seen tracking card #s in a very overt way.)
I bet they have loyalty cards too, so that can collate all your purchases and advertise at you better, and/or sell the data for a decent profit