The e-commerce giant Amazon is launching a new kind of promotion.
If you let him scan your handprint, Amazon will give you a $ 10 voucher.
A campaign spotted by the specialized media TechCrunch, which is "
only available in the United States
", according to Amazon France.
This promotional campaign is a way for the giant to highlight one of its products: Amazon One.
The company marketed this device last September, a new “
fast, convenient and contactless
”
payment method
.
The machine scans the shape of the hand, the location of the veins and its topology.
Then all you have to do is link the unique imprint to a payment method.
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The hand then becomes a signature which is used for payment.
Passing your hand over the scanner allows you to pay in about a second.
This device is, according to Amazon, already installed in 50 American stores, including Whole Foods, a brand purchased by the group in 2017 for $ 13 billion.
Amazon One is not intended to be exclusive to the group's stores, which would allow the digital titan to track buyers in other places, such as stadiums or offices.
Amazon known for questionable data management
The American firm claims to have made the choice of secure technology with palm identification.
The captured images would be encrypted and then sent to a secure cloud.
The news of this promotion, however, made the experts in the protection of private data jump.
"
It's horrible that Amazon is asking people to sell their bodies, but it's even worse that people are doing it for such a low price
," said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
Read also: Amazon: AWS, the cloud division at the center of the expansion strategy
In the past Amazon has already been at the heart of controversies regarding its relationship to biometric data.
The company, for example, sold facial recognition services to US authorities.
In 2019, the group also came under fire from criticism, when American media revealed that the voice assistant Alexa retains data, even when it is deleted by the user.
More recently, the company was fined a record 746 million euros in Luxembourg for non-compliance with European regulations on the private data of Internet users.