nicerdicer

Correct. The said vending machine was collecting data without users consent. And because it was facial recognition data it means that the collected data can be tied to an individual.

It would have been different if the collected data was just a counter which indcated the number of users of that machine. These kind of data could not have been tied to a specific individual.

That is correct. Switzerland is not a part of the European Union. The manufacturer, Invenda, is located in Switzerland. That is where their headquarters are. It might be possible that their vending machines are produced within the EU (another country where production costs are lower). It might be possible that these specific models (those who offer data collection) are designed for markets outside of EU.

They advertise their product as “Made in EU” (see brochure). This could be made on purpose to implicate that their data collection meets GDPR requirements, leading to believe that everything is compliant with the law.

Bad news, the manufacturer is located in Switzerland and, as stated in the brochure, they advertise their product as “Made in EU”. Probably to implicate that any data which will be collected and processed will be under the terms of GDPR.

I haven’t looked up the terms regarding GDPR, but I assume that their data collection is somewhat “compliant” with GDPR, which does not necessaryly mean anything. It can just mean that data is not stored locally, albeit it will be send to the manufacturer (but probably entcrypted). However, under GDPR you can enforce your right of deletion of the collected data - that is, if you know that data about you has been collected.

What makes this issue so severe is that it would have never been detected that data has been collected and processed, if it weren’t for a malfunction.

Edit: grammar, spelling

The worst part of all is that no one would think of the fact that a vending machine is performing facial recognition techniques, because in general it is assumed that a vending machine is a mechanical device, as it has been in the past. There is not any user benefit in that.

I researched the manufacuter and in their brochure (see page 6) of a similar vending machine it is revealed what data can be processed:

Among the worst data sets are:

• product demographics
• measuring of foot traffic
• gender/ age/ etc.

Bonus: on page 7 of the product brochure they introduce an app which allows the customer to make purchases directly from their smatphone, with features like

• consumer engagement through gamification, interactive marketing, gifting, scratch-and-win receipts, product sampling and cross selling

“What do customers get?”

• a fun and engaging payment process

Finally! I always thought that payment is not fun enough. What a time to be alive.

Here’s a crazy thing no one talks about; Bugs. Dad taught me to clean the car’s windshield at every gas stop. Ya know, use the squeegee at the station? That was normal car maintenance. We’d often stop just for that purpose. Bug guts everywhere.

This. When I was a kid during the 90s, cars were covered in bugs during summer. Today there are bugs on windshields too, but compared to back then it’s maybe only 10% of them. What also comes with the decliine in the insect population is a decline in the population of birds, because there are lesser and lesser natural habitats and food sources.

I am from Europe. What I also noticed is that, when you find insects or spiders and such, many of them are invasive and originally located in southern Europe. But each year they appear farther north, probably because of cilmate change.

For instance, the spider Zoropsis spinimana is a relatively new species in our region, and it’s venomous*. Due to it’s similarity it can be confused with Tegenaria domestica which is harmless to humans.

Also, with a warmer climate there are more ticks which are prone to spread diseases harmful to humans.

• Addition: the bite of Zoropsis spinimana is compareable to a wasp sting and is only dangerous to people who have allergies against the venom.