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RFID Tags on Mach3 Razorblades Snap Your Photo
peteo writes "Think RFID tags are harmless? Look at how they are being used in the UK: "At the Tesco Cambridge store, a camera trained on the Gillette blade shelf, and triggered by RFID tags, captures a photo of each customer who removes a Mach3 pack. Another photo is taken at the checkout and security staff compare the two images to ensure they always have a pair"
According to the spokesman,"there are certainly not any privacy concerns" in relation to these tags. He adds that there is plenty of in-store signage indicating the supermarket's use of CCTV cameras. ""
When were razor blades so valuable to warrant this?
Tin foil hat privacy issues aside, the reason for this is because Gilette Mach 3 Razor Blades are the most shoplifted item in Britain. This is due to Gilette's "strategy" of giving away the razors and charging through the nose for the blades.
Is everyone who picks something up, decides they prefer to get a 12 pack, or the cheap disposable, or whatever, going to get investigated by the police?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Suddently splitting up and asking your significant other to pick something up for you in a different part of a store warrants a crime.
- Serge Wroclawski
When you go shopping, always have an accomplice - (s)he picks up the blades, hands them to you somewhere else in the store, and you take them to the checkout.
Of course, this would happen 'accidentally' quite often anyway, but it's always good to make more trouble for stupid schemes like this.
[This trial] is not to do with security or theft, it is a supply chain trial."
But they then say security staff use it. So what is it for? What supply chain information does it give them that they can't get from the till receipts?
My local supermarket (Safeways, Shepherds Bush) had huge shoplifting problems with razor blades. Rather than implementing this (presumably expensive) scheme, they took the simple step of moving the blades behind the counter at the store pharmacy. Shoplifting drops overnight, no added cost and no privacy concerns.
For preventing theft, the RFID tag would be enough alone.
So why do they need the photos for ?
Marketing ? But for customer group identification one photo would be sufficient.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I don't know how it is set up, but does it also take your picture if you put it back later? Otherwise the picture on the checkout will register you as a thief..
God , i would love to be able to make trouble about that. If you live in England , try it and if they mark you as a thief then unleash all your fury. (and i don't mean "Slashdot reader mode" fury. i mean "Quake 3 mayhem mode" fury).
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
So, you mean instead of training a camera on you continuously as you shop, now they can capture only a few key moments?
You'd think people would be declaring this a privacy *win* since you'll be video taped less now, and only at the points that matter.
The funny thing is, this is preceded by
Of course, these statements are essentially contradictory. Obviously Gillette does not have a monopoly, because there exist alternatives. They apparently offer a superior product, but at a higher cost. The whole point of the free market is, you get to choose what you pay for. If the cheaper blades were as good, people would move to that system and Gillette's price would come down.
Are you alleging that Gillette somehow uses its market presence to squeeze out the other players?
Not every high price indicates the boogey-man of "monopoly". Higher quality sometimes demands higher price.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Ah, yes, well, RFID tags in general -- I was just commenting on the photograph part. RFID tags that stay in place could be bad... but in this case, they're part of the packaging, surely? And so not really a problem... who keeps the packaging for their razor blades?
No, I do not have a loyalty card. No, I do not want an application form. I would tell you why, but then I would have to charge you at my usual hourly rates...
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
When I was at Uni, the library had tags in all the book spines that were 'neutralised' when you checked out a book. If you tried to walk out of the library with a book you weren't supposed to, the turnstiles would notice, and lock.
:)
Fair enough - a good system. Except, students being students thought up a joke which I'm sure has been tried everywhere in the world such schemes exist - you rip the tag out of a book and drop it in the bag of your 'friend' when they're not looking.
Then when they stroll out through the turnstiles, they double up over the now locked turnstile and have to turn out their bag for the guy on the gates.
Now, given these RFID tags are so small and unobtrusive, and as one of the sellers in that article notes that no-one has called to ask what the tags are doing in their razor blades, I wonder how stores would cope with RFID DOS raids - customers go in and start slipping RFIDs into boxes, etc, to screw up the store's processes, hassle the wrong people, etc.
I mean, if you don't want the stores to use them, make it a disadvantage for them to use them
Just an idle thought.
I am tempted, should this arrive at my local Tesco, to carefully put the damn things in my basket, smiling for the camera, walk to another aisle, and put them on another shelf. Just out of interest, am I deemed to have bought them when I pick them up, or when I go through the checkout?
Higher quality sometimes demands higher price.
Damn straight. After using the Mach3, going back to ordinary razors just didn't cut it.
It infuriates me as a customer to see people dumping stuff back on shelves like that, especially perishables. But someone making such a protest with non-perishable razor blades isn't being inconsiderate (and neither person is committing a crime AFAIK). You would punish protesting customers for the sins of the inconsiderate ones. Stores would trash our privacy to punish shoplifters.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Um... Most of the major supermarket chains in the UK, including Tesco and Sainsburys, have a "loyalty card" scheme that allows them to do just that, in exchange for a small discount on your shopping. These are used to target advertising, adjust product lines according to customer demand, etc. They don't tell you in as many words that this is what the cards are for, but everyone with an ounce of brain matter knows it, no-one really makes a secret of it at the stores, and it seems the vast majority of their customers voluntarily get such a card, supplying the required information in exchange for a discount.
So yes, they can theoretically track every new purchase you make, as long as you use the card with it. That's the whole point. If you don't like that, don't get the card, but the vast majority of people don't seem to care.
I'm curious to know what they gain by this arrangement, though. There are already scanners on the door at that Tesco (my local branch, half a mile from my home) that are supposed to detect anyone walking out with security tagged goods that haven't been paid for, and a security guard by the door. (The same is true of pretty much every major supermarket over here, and most high street clothing stores etc. where there's a big risk of theft.) What does this gain them, a picture if someone manages to get through the alarmed section and past the guard without setting them off? In that case, what if someone else picked up the tagged item, got photographed, and then replaced it on the shelf, prior to a second person stealing them? Oo-er, doesn't sound promising. Maybe I'll just buy my razors from Sainsburys (the other big supermarket, half a mile in the other direction) instead...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"The solution here is to break the system. Take razors off the shelf then leave them elsewhere within the store. You're not shoplifting and you can cause enough noise that the system is worthless."
Until Fritz and Berman pass the Digital Millenium Shopping Act that makes it a felony to "circumvent" (or obfuscate) any hair brained "shoplifiting protection system" even if you don't steal ANYTHING.
Sooner or later the day will come when we are guilty of a crime for simply making it DIFFICULT for private and government authorites to track our every move...
Corporatism != Free Market
At the Tesco Cambridge store, reports the magazine, a camera trained on the Gillette blade shelf, and triggered by the tags, captures a photo of each customer who removes a Mach3 pack. Another photo is taken at the checkout and security staff compare the two images to ensure they always have a pair.
So you and your wife are shopping, you drop a pack of blades in your common cart, then you go out to the car. Meanwhile your wife gets to the cashier, and her photo sure doesn't match the scratchy-faced guy who put the blades in the cart. Hey, lady, you tryin' to kipe these or somethin'??
Now what? It seems innocuous enough on the surface -- your wife merely pays for the blades and life goes on as before. But multiply this by every family with kids who shop in the usual random way, and it's a helluva lot of inconvenience (and if there's any justice, more cost to the store than the theft prevention is worth).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And that makes him(her) how much different from the majority of slashdotters? ;-)
mrg
Guys, maybe I'm shot away, but I think many of you are missing the point. The whole point of RFIDs are for stock control- shelf and point of sale. If you take it off the shelf then a backoffice system registers it to be restocked/reodered the next time it runs a batch. Put it back on the shelf - it gets readded to the stock level.
The holy grail of this is to eliminate the time wasted at cashiers, as your trolley can be wheeled though a checkout and all the RFIDs check themselves out. Two seconds later a bill appears, you hand over the cash, away you go. In bigger supermarkets you will probably be verified as you walk out the door with a more sensitive scanner to make sure that your outgoings match what you just paid/billed for. With the token minority thug in uniform just to make sure you don't do a runner. Chances are if you "forget" that those mach 10 mega supercharged blades are in your back pocket you would have been billed for it anyway - depending on the checkout setup.
The whole idea of the photo I imagine is a convenient piggy back on the rf technology - as there is an event triggered when the product is removed. It makes sense to do it then. If this wasn't such a big problem, nobody would have been bothered enough about this to develop these systems. I also wouldn't be worried about being tracked/categoriesed/etc by these things. Supermarkets don't really care what you look like. To them, you are a number. (see next paragraph). Not to mention the medium strong data protection laws in UK don't make this attractive for supermarkets.
All the tracking/categorising they can use is already gathered through use of debit/credit cards, and loyalty cards. US viewers should appreciate that over here we use debit cards for amounts greater than 1.50 pounds like sheep without too much thought. Loyalty cards are very popular too. Note that supermarkets here can't even deal with there loyalty schemes. They're all outsourced to professional agencies for pattern analysis due to the sheer amount of stuff that is collected.
But back to rfids - supermarkets and Britain in general has more cctv cameras than anywhere, more than most of us still actually realise. The point of taking the photo when you take the item off the shelf is to eliminate the easy "I didn't put that in my pocket" etc rubbish excuses. These can then be cross referenced with the cctv system.
Families included, even briefcase style exchanges will probably be picked up.
RFID systems mean more convenience to the shopper, and it will mean you can just run in and run out of a shop as queues will move much faster, less and less sore arms for checkout staff, less theft will mean cheaper prices. (and more profit) Get a grip guys, its just simple economics - not everything is X files material.
This could be enormous fun. Imagine now. A group of people go into a supermarket and disperse. Half the group each select a packet of razor blades, then pass them to members of the other half of the group, who take them to the tills and pay.
Or just keep picking up packs of razor blades, wandering around the store for awhile and putting them back on the shelves. Or wave a packet of razor blades back and forth in front of the sensor to keep taking photographs.
In some stores, you can go out to the exit side of the checkout e.g. to go to the tobacco kiosk - there is only one exit, with security guards in attendance. You could sneak packets of razor blades out of the main sales floor, then pass them backward through the checkouts, triggering the cameras as you go. Put the blades back on the shelves.
If there is an easy way to kill the RFID tags or blind the sensors {this will require experimentation} then maybe this can be done right there in-store.
Yes, there is plenty of potential for fun to be had with these things.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Did you guys even read the news after 9/11? They found notes that the guys had been handed by their 'leaders' reminding them to shave so they wouldn't look like terrorists...
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