13 ms·

Amazon One – Palm recognition for Amazon Go

123 points by Thomashuet 6y ago

mister_hn 6y ago
Just a coincidence, or Amazon got inspired by Fujitsu with its truedentity for Palmsecure? https://www.fujitsu.com/ro/solutions/business-technology/security/product/palmsecure/truedentity/ https://www.fujitsu.com/ro/solutions/business-technology/sec...
neilalexander 6y ago
> We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm. > When you hold your palm over the Amazon One device, the technology evaluates multiple aspects of your palm. No two palms are alike, so we analyze all these aspects with our vision technology and select the most distinct identifiers on your palm to create your palm signature. Can someone ELI5 this to me? Is there some biological thing I am missing here or is it just as simple as, unlike fingerprints which are commonplace, other organisations tend not to have images of your palms?
- jclulow 6y ago
  One imagines once Amazon starts cataloguing palms, quite a few government and law enforcement agencies will suddenly tend to have quite a lot of images of palms! I expect they were trying to contrast with face recognition, though.
  - alfonsodev 6y ago
    > I expect they were trying to contrast with face recognition, though. That's how I understand it too, I think this is just UX, by the time you check out they know who you are and what did you pick up, so I think the palm is just a gesture to confirm, maybe confirming by walking away the store with item or with a face was a weird user experience, and they are trying confirmation "by hand". Or I'm curious what happen to the, "you just walk away with your items" experience?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - riknos314 6y ago
      The experience would be pretty much the same I'm guessing. Current Amazon go experience: Open amznGo app -> hold qr code over reader to gain entry to store -> grab stuff -> walk out Amazon go experience with one: hold palm over reader to gain entry to store -> grab stuff -> walk out
- underyx 6y ago
  Sounds like palm prints are even easier to harvest from public figures than fingerprints. Take a photo at a speech, you can likely make a silicone mold replicating their palm, and you get to shop for groceries with their card.
  - TiltMeSenpai 6y ago
    On the flip side, palm recognition allows you to use infrared-based vein biometrics, which requires special lighting conditions. I don't think this is currently feasible for fingerprints.
- gjhr 6y ago
  At a guess they are probably saying that a human when looking at a picture of a palm would not be able to tell you who it is, unlike a picture of someone that includes their face or body. Seems a bit of a pointless distinction as the Amazon Go stores heavily rely on cameras to track people when in store.
- solatic 6y ago
  They're being intentionally vague. Their argument is that they're only mapping from palm to credit card number and mobile phone number, which isn't the same thing as mapping from palm to real identity name (unless you also link to your Amazon account). Which belies the fact that it's much easier to map from a credit card number or mobile phone number to a real identity name.
underyx 6y ago
At this point I feel like products are named One when the product manager and marketing people are having a bad day and want to just be done with the naming discussions already.
- 7leafer 6y ago
  One is the name of the monopoly, and when you see things like XYZ One, the brand is actually One, and whichever XYZ coming before it is merely a product, not the vice versa.
- ykevinator 6y ago
  Lol
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- colmvp 6y ago
  I had initially read your comment as "marketing people are having a bad day and want to just be one with the naming discussion"
  - jnxx 6y ago
    Said the Japanese monk to the hot dog vendor: "Make me one with everything" :)
- silentsea90 6y ago
  X and One fall in this category. They sound cool and could be any Amazon product under the sun. The problem though is the next iteration ie X2, X3 etc sound fine but One 2 sounds weird
  - ryanjm33 6y ago
    And adding + to the name
  - some_furry 6y ago
ageitgey 6y ago
> We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. I'm sure the main one was that people associate fingerprints with being arrested, but maybe they could trick people into volunteering to be constantly fingerprinted by a private company if they just used a different part of the hand.
- alexmat 6y ago
  From the FAQ, it seems like this is not as invasive as fingerprints: "We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm."
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ben_w 6y ago
    If that is understood to mean palm prints are less invasive than fingerprints, then it also means palm prints are less good at correctly identifying users. I read that part of their statement as a comparison of data privacy (not invasiveness) with face recognition. I think the contactless part was about invasiveness.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      >If that is understood to mean palm prints are less invasive than fingerprints, then it also means palm prints are less good at correctly identifying users. Not necessarily. Purely guessing here, but I think it is also partially guided by the idea that you leave your full fingerprints on objects quite often, no matter where you go. Touched something? You got a fingerprint left there. With palm, how often do you press your full palm flat against something? And when you do it, it also gets rid of the natural curving of the palm that those air sensors detect (I assume). I can only think of door handles, but a lot of people don't use the full hand, and I think even out of those that do, they don't make full contact with the entirety of the door handle surface and their palm. If that was their guiding idea, then it is possible to be just as good at correctly identifying users, while also being less invasive in terms of privacy. Also, with fingerprints, there are already plenty of databases that have it, like, if you ever applied for TSA Precheck or if you had to get those prints taken for immigration paperwork or for passport or whatever. But there is no giant existing database of your palm 3D scans. And, as opposed to face scan, you cannot be identified by someone just looking at that scan and then encountering you on the street.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Year 2030. I kind of like the old school physical credit cards. It was fun to carry a wallet too. You could customize it, add a bit of flair and constantly obsess about making it thin. Good ol’ days.
- toper-centage 6y ago
  Yeah, but that's just simply inconvenient. When you look at a copyrighted building or hear a copyrighted song, you need a quick and integrated way to debit the royalties from your crypto wallet. How did folks do that in 2020? Did you have to enter your credit card details in hundreds of websites before leaving the house each day?
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    If you think that updating people's financial balance was difficult in 2020, wait until you hear how they updated their social credit scores. Basically, everyone had to write their thoughts down on one of a few government-approved social media websites, but the government would crowd-source most of the actual surveillance and punishment, by relying on mobs of users to "cancel" people who expressed the wrong ideas. Completely inefficient!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
1023bytes 6y ago
Worst name ever
- IshKebab 6y ago
  They're just feeling left out - everyone else has a product called "One". The next version will be called the Amazon One X 360 Series X.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
plumeria 6y ago
Will this service have a "forget me" button? I think this should be the first question addressed in their FAQ.
- wooptoo 6y ago
  Under the GDPR in EU or the DPA2018 in the UK you can request your data to be erased, corrected or you can grant limited access to your data. You also have the right to request that a decision to not be made solely using automated means. This is a good introductory article https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-do-i-make-a-subject-access-request https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-do-i-make... Too bad most of these companies operate based on the US legislation which doesn't grant the same consumer rights.
  - 6d6b73 6y ago
    The question is - is picture/scan of your palm YOUR data? or is it Amazon's data? I'm sure corporate lawyers can find ways around simple things like GDPR.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  It's not the first question addressed in the FAQ, but there is this answer: "Yes, you can request to delete data associated with Amazon One through the device itself or via the online customer portal at one.amazon.com. We believe customers should always be in complete control of when and where they use the service, and we designed Amazon One with this in mind." Perhaps, as the sibling comment suggests, this was an architectural decision made based on the requirements for operating in the EU.
poisonborz 6y ago
Coupling un-alienable, (purposefully) unchangeable biological marks to any account is always horrible idea. And not just the privacy part, for one, it can (only) be unwillingly altered (eg. by an accident), the same way as fingerprints, so a secondary backup code is needed anyway, making the whole setup a bad sort of convenience feature. The proper solution would be a safe hardware key mechanism.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  That's just not true. By definition all our identities are basically linked to a biometric, namely our face. If you walk into your bank and want to withdraw a large sum from your account, someone at the counter looks at your face and a shitty small photo taken from you either on their system or on your passport to determine if there is a "face match". A proper technological solution to the current more insecure human verification process of your biometric is only an improvement, not a horrible idea as you suggest.
  - schrodinger 6y ago
    Banks do that, but retail stores don't… yet. I think we accept a higher bar for authentication and security for a bank than we do for a retail store.
  - monadic2 6y ago
    Yea but that was fixed with introducing pin numbers on debit cards. We haven't relied on manual authentication of transactions for decades, thank god.
- BerislavLopac 6y ago
  You don't need an accident. I was on chemo earlier this year, and I had to re-register my fingerprints both on my phone and on my laptop.
- xorcist 6y ago
  Also, Amazon (and any involved subcontractors) now have access to your palm, with the possibility of accessing any other system authorized by it. We tell users not to re-use their passwords, but the same goes for fingerprints too.
dfischer 6y ago
I certainly hope there’s alarms ringing in a few heads about this.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Well, it's not like they're literally requiring users to take a mark in their right hand.
immmmmm 6y ago
Researcher in biometrics working on contactless palm/finger recognition here. 1) A new innovation ok. People have been doing that for more than a decade, my group included. 2) Given the sensors look, it's almost certainly near infrared (NIR) camera, probably 850nm illumination and the dark surface is a NIR filter. 3) It certainly capture a mix between palm veins (850nm quite absorbed by de-oxygenated hemoglobin) and palm skin ridges. "Rather, the images are encrypted and sent to a highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud where we create your palm signature." 4) Weird approach to biometric template security to send palm picture to a server... 5) Curious how anti-spoofing is implemented, if at all. edit: less agressive
- nakagin 6y ago
  5) Are there any anti-spoofing measures already out there? It sounds like if there are, they can be easily bypassed...
  - immmmmm 6y ago
    First time a phone was advertised unlocking with facial recognition, it took one day for researchers to unlock it with a printed photograph. Try that with modern phones.. I have done three years research on that topic: yes there are out there! Do they work: to some extent yes. Can it be bypassed: like any system yes.
ja27 6y ago
Is it discontinued yet?
nafizh 6y ago
'One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.' Umm, if this is true, how are you identifying the person then?
- brian_herman 6y ago
  Yeah, I was confused at this statement too.
- n_t 6y ago
  I think they are saying that humans cannot associate palm prints to an individual, unlike face (or even eyes in certain cases). It's just security by obscurity kind of thing but yes, not very convincing argument for privacy.
  - strawberrypuree 6y ago
    This is a sleight of hand on Amazon's part. Humans looking at a palm print and identifying the person is not a concern, it's computers looking at a palm, associating it with a credit card, which can then open up a trove of behavioral data to push (i.e., ads) to people. It's disingenuous, like putting someone in a tiger cage and saying "Don't worry, there's no way you can drown in here -- we made sure there's no water."
- BerislavLopac 6y ago
  My guess is that they meant that a person couldn't determine someone's identity, unlike with, say, facial recognition.
- IshKebab 6y ago
  Perhaps using some electrical or acoustic properties? They're very cagey about how it works, so I doubt it is just a camera. > Q: What is the device actually scanning when it creates my unique palm signature? > > A: the technology evaluates multiple aspects of your palm Ok then.
- hughw 6y ago
dustinmoris 6y ago
Similar to FinGo (https://fingo.to https://fingo.to) and Hitachi VeinID Five (https://digitalsecurity.hitachi.eu/products/veinid-five/ https://digitalsecurity.hitachi.eu/products/veinid-five/). All these new biometrics share one common theme: Better privacy for a user. FaceID has the problem that I can't hide it. As soon as I walk somewhere cameras can capture and match my face against their own records, however if I never registered my face ID with Amazon then they will know that I am possibly a recurring customer, but not know who I am. Palm IDs, VeinIDs, etc. are biometrics which I can easily hold back from disclosing. Only when I actively insert or present my finger/hand/palm I allow another device to scan my hand and do a match analysis. This means that I as a user am in better control of when and to whom I want to disclose my identity.
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  Or we could (radical idea here) not use biometrics. I don't mean to be dismissive, but what advantage does this provide over opening a web site and hitting "pay" or maybe some sort of NFC tap? This looks like biometrics for the sake of being cool and flashy, which is not a trade-off I'm willing to make.
  - suvelx 6y ago
    The only benefit I can think of, is that biometrics has no way of me loaning my credentials. If my age verification was tied to my palm, I'd have to cut off my hand to let a teenager buy booze with it. But I still don't feel this is a compelling argument.
    - mmm_grayons 6y ago
      I honestly don't care that much about kids buying booze. The "think of the children" argument also typically leads me to be suspicious of the motives of those that make it. Kids are going to drink if they want to; I didn't because I chose to do otherwise, not because I couldn't.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    Here's an example which something like Amazon One can solve, but a card cannot: When I go to the grocery shop and I buy alcohol then I have to wait at the self checkout till until a member of staff comes to verify my age before I can pay for my shopping basket. That involves me showing them an ID (e.g. my driving license) and them having to verify my biometric (face) by looking at me and then looking at my driving license. This is time consuming and requires additional staff at self checkout tills, making them less "self checkouty". On the other hand (or palm should I say :P) I could age verify myself only once at an Amazon One kiosk and then have my legal age linked to my verified palm. Now I can go and buy alcohol and when I present my palm then the checkout till knows that it's me (because unlike a driving license or credit card or phone I can't hand my palm to someone else). It knows that I'm of legal age to buy alcohol and therefore was able to do three things in one go: age verify, pay and reward points all via a single hand gesture. That is a win for the consumer and the shop as they don't need that extra staff anymore and there's less of a human bottle neck, leading to faster checkouts.
manigandham 6y ago
Terrible naming aside, the onslaught of biometrics everywhere is very concerning.
- kleiba 6y ago
  I recently attended a scientific conference on biometrics (I'm not from the field) and it was shocking to learn about all that stuff, both what's going on in the research community as well as on the law makers' side of things.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > as well as on the law makers' side of things. Anything you're allowed to share?
    - kleiba 6y ago
      Oh, there wasn't anything secret presented at the conference as far as I'm aware. It was a European conference and, for instance, I hadn't previously known about the Prüm Arrangements [1], or perhaps I had and forgotten about them. In any event I was not aware of the ability to freely share such highly private information about individuals across borders, and quite shocked to learn about it. Mind you, the majority of the attendants of the conference were absolutely uncritical about such regulations being in place. In fact, they were mostly in favor of them it seemed, which is not surprising given that that's what their research is based on. [1] https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/mayors-office-policing-and-crime-mopac/governance-and-decision-making/mopac-decisions-0/exchange-biometric-data-across-europe-prum-arrangements https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/mayors-office-policing-...
mdellabitta 6y ago
Interesting time to launch a product that involves everybody touching something.
- doctorhandshake 6y ago
  FTA: It’s contactless.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Is that your professional medical opinion, Dr. Handshake? More seriously, how successful do you think people will be at holding their palm above the device at a close enough distance for an accurate reading?
nakagin 6y ago
I still don’t get it: why would you choose something that’s so hard to change, if ever, for a store ID? It’s convenient but is it secure? There are photos of me waving with my palms out...
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  The photo of your palms out doesn't include an image of your veins because it wasn't taken with an infrared camera.
  - nakagin 6y ago
    “ One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.” Wow. Never thought of that. But is it easy to reconstruct veins?
- ctvo 6y ago
  Do you really think this is a photo of your palm they're storing? No doubt there are 3D scanners (to map the elevation of your palms, the depth of the lines, etc.), infrared imaging and a slew of other minor sensors. To make this fast, they need to effectively correlate enough of the data to identify you without relying solely on a single thing.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    We already know there are solid theoretical basis for rebuilding 3d spaces from photos. Infrared imaging doesn't dramatically get different data from a regular camera except maybe picking up your veins a bit more clearly. There aren't a bunch of other sensors available.. probably some heat/temperature just to make sure it's a real palm but that's not for uniqueness.
elil17 6y ago
My college uses these to control entrance to the dining halls. The technology has been around for years and it works consistently and effectively. They want you to think this is something highly innovative but I’m pretty sure they’re just licensing already existing palm scanners.
- joezydeco 6y ago
  Were those dining hall scanners using a palm-on-glass technology, or mid-air like what Amazon is showing?
  - elil17 6y ago
    Mid-air, exactly like Amazon's
    - notyourwork 6y ago
      I would love to see a picture of one.
      - elil17 6y ago
        https://www.idemia.com/innovation/morphowave https://www.idemia.com/innovation/morphowave Their product uses visual light to take the 3D scan (hence the green glow) but their patent filings cover a lot of related scanning techniques.
  - catsdanxe 6y ago
    My college used mid air finger print scanners. It scanned all 4 finger prints and would let you pass even if you had a bandaid over one.
- MisterPea 6y ago
  A big thing though is how cheap they can make this. The Idemia one seems a lot more expensive. Driving down costs on existing technology is innovation. (Although who knows how much this actually costs to amazon)
ctvo 6y ago
This is a continuation of Amazon's remove all inconvenience strategy. And it'll work. You're waving your hand and walking through now, no more scanning, no more opening up an app, no more tinkering with your phone. By chipping away at each of these friction points, no manner how minor, their moat grows and customers will notice a difference between an Amazon retail store vs. a competitor's.
- ragona 6y ago
  What I think is interesting is that I suspect they’ll eagerly license this to competitor stores. A palm reader does not turn your local Safeway into Amazon Go, and they know that. Having a slice of every point of sale could be huge; imagine how much better this is than having to use FaceID during a pandemic. (Tap tap, pin, pin, tap is a LOT more friction than “hover.”) I’d pay for it if I ran a retail store. I wonder if Amazon will ever compete with Visa or other payment providers.
  - barranger 6y ago
    "I wonder if Amazon will ever compete with..." Yes has to be the assumption at this point
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Visa can't be bothered to innovate. 90% of what Amazon has done should have been done by industry incumbents.
      - gonzo41 6y ago
        Well hopefully amazon will push enough of them to the brink of extinction that they to will innovate or suffer the fate of negative selective pressure.
        anongraddebt 6y ago
        Often, you're too late and the cake is baked when innovation is reactive.
yalogin 6y ago
So far what Apple and other companies did is to keep the biometric auth tied to the device and not let leak out. Now Amazon is saying leaking it is the feature. They are using the hand as the identifier, so the biometric id is what is used to identify a person, not an email address, not a random number or a handle. The biometric data that cannot be changed ever is the identifier. It's very troubling. - The privacy and security implications are huge. - Its tied to commerce, not some airport entry thing. Commerce has legs. - On top of that its scary because Amazon can push this all over the world and give their tech for free to businesses. - Other companies will provide this "feature" too. The one door I was hoping will never be opened is opened now.
- gonzo41 6y ago
  This is the door you didn't hope was opened? So many other more terrible doors are open. Not saying this is great. But look at what social media is doing to the social fabric. This is just shopping.
  - debrice 6y ago
    I would caution against such statement “this is just shopping”. Social media also used to be underestimated in the damage they can do. Privacy information brokers are like an Hydra, you cut one head, 3 new ones grow... and before you know it, your biometrics, bed time conversations, source of news, children habits... are up for sell because someone thought “it’s just X“ and underestimated what someone else can do with all the data they collected. I believe we need to change our optimistic attitude when it comes to individual privacy as we are nothing if not seeding the world of tomorrow, the world of the generations to come.
  - dfischer 6y ago
    Purchasing behavior is literally what drives and directs the world today.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ncr100 6y ago
tomger 6y ago
I recognize the ease of use. I don’t have to carry a device with me. But looking a little farther in the future, will I loose the ability to not be able to authenticate anymore?
tinyhouse 6y ago
Not fully following what problem this is solving. I was in one of these Go stores and scanning the app to get in is convenient enough for me. Now, if you're telling me I can use this palm technology in almost every store I go to, then I can see the value. But if it's just for Go/Amazon/WHF stores then not so much.
arbitrage 6y ago
even though it's designed to have the user hover, people are gonna touch this anyway. and that's just gross.
karmasimida 6y ago
Not going to offer my biometrics this easily lol But good try
- ncr100 6y ago
  To me this is creepy. I am sure to "evolve" my thinking on it, but: I might consider cutting an artificial hand off a silicone doll and registering its hand print. Carrying a necklace of dismembered hands might creep out the store attendees & shoppers though.
DharmaPolice 6y ago
This is a little off-topic but can someone explain why some companies are hosting official content on domains that are similar to their real domains but not their actual domain? e.g. AboutAmazon.com or tescogiftcards.com - at first glance they look fake and it's additional step to verify they are actually affiliated with the company.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Usually this happens because a totally different departments runs the marketing site, and it's just easier to have their own deployment than integrate to the main site. In some cases it's a hosted CMS. Another reason is for cookie management. This way your cookies aren't sent to the marketing site. I'm not sure why Amazon does it though, as I think they're big enough to run their own CMS and therefore the cookie thing isn't really an issue.
- advisedwang 6y ago
  If a page hosted on amazon.com has security vulnerabilities, users real amazon accounts are at risk because of same-origin policy etc. Putting a page on a different domain eliminates this risk. Another reason is for branding. Using aboutamazon.com for PR fluff keeps amazon.com reserved for their actual consumer products.
throwtheball 6y ago
> palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm Isn’t this what the whole product is about, tying palm prints to identity? Maybe they are saying nobody else collects palm prints so others can’t tie to identity?
sschueller 6y ago
This is how the CIA/NSA get your hand print. No thanks.
Dig1t 6y ago
Very creepy, I will try my best to never use this.

123 points by Thomashuet 6y ago

Just a coincidence, or Amazon got inspired by Fujitsu with its truedentity for Palmsecure? https://www.fujitsu.com/ro/solutions/business-technology/security/product/palmsecure/truedentity/ https://www.fujitsu.com/ro/solutions/business-technology/sec...

neilalexander 6y ago

> We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm. > When you hold your palm over the Amazon One device, the technology evaluates multiple aspects of your palm. No two palms are alike, so we analyze all these aspects with our vision technology and select the most distinct identifiers on your palm to create your palm signature. Can someone ELI5 this to me? Is there some biological thing I am missing here or is it just as simple as, unlike fingerprints which are commonplace, other organisations tend not to have images of your palms?

jclulow 6y ago
One imagines once Amazon starts cataloguing palms, quite a few government and law enforcement agencies will suddenly tend to have quite a lot of images of palms! I expect they were trying to contrast with face recognition, though.
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  > I expect they were trying to contrast with face recognition, though. That's how I understand it too, I think this is just UX, by the time you check out they know who you are and what did you pick up, so I think the palm is just a gesture to confirm, maybe confirming by walking away the store with item or with a face was a weird user experience, and they are trying confirmation "by hand". Or I'm curious what happen to the, "you just walk away with your items" experience?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - riknos314 6y ago
    The experience would be pretty much the same I'm guessing. Current Amazon go experience: Open amznGo app -> hold qr code over reader to gain entry to store -> grab stuff -> walk out Amazon go experience with one: hold palm over reader to gain entry to store -> grab stuff -> walk out
underyx 6y ago
Sounds like palm prints are even easier to harvest from public figures than fingerprints. Take a photo at a speech, you can likely make a silicone mold replicating their palm, and you get to shop for groceries with their card.
- TiltMeSenpai 6y ago
  On the flip side, palm recognition allows you to use infrared-based vein biometrics, which requires special lighting conditions. I don't think this is currently feasible for fingerprints.
gjhr 6y ago
At a guess they are probably saying that a human when looking at a picture of a palm would not be able to tell you who it is, unlike a picture of someone that includes their face or body. Seems a bit of a pointless distinction as the Amazon Go stores heavily rely on cameras to track people when in store.
solatic 6y ago
They're being intentionally vague. Their argument is that they're only mapping from palm to credit card number and mobile phone number, which isn't the same thing as mapping from palm to real identity name (unless you also link to your Amazon account). Which belies the fact that it's much easier to map from a credit card number or mobile phone number to a real identity name.

underyx 6y ago

At this point I feel like products are named One when the product manager and marketing people are having a bad day and want to just be done with the naming discussions already.

7leafer 6y ago
One is the name of the monopoly, and when you see things like XYZ One, the brand is actually One, and whichever XYZ coming before it is merely a product, not the vice versa.
ykevinator 6y ago
Lol
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
colmvp 6y ago
I had initially read your comment as "marketing people are having a bad day and want to just be one with the naming discussion"
- jnxx 6y ago
  Said the Japanese monk to the hot dog vendor: "Make me one with everything" :)
silentsea90 6y ago
X and One fall in this category. They sound cool and could be any Amazon product under the sun. The problem though is the next iteration ie X2, X3 etc sound fine but One 2 sounds weird
- ryanjm33 6y ago
  And adding + to the name
- some_furry 6y ago

ageitgey 6y ago

> We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. I'm sure the main one was that people associate fingerprints with being arrested, but maybe they could trick people into volunteering to be constantly fingerprinted by a private company if they just used a different part of the hand.

alexmat 6y ago
From the FAQ, it seems like this is not as invasive as fingerprints: "We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 6y ago
  If that is understood to mean palm prints are less invasive than fingerprints, then it also means palm prints are less good at correctly identifying users. I read that part of their statement as a comparison of data privacy (not invasiveness) with face recognition. I think the contactless part was about invasiveness.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >If that is understood to mean palm prints are less invasive than fingerprints, then it also means palm prints are less good at correctly identifying users. Not necessarily. Purely guessing here, but I think it is also partially guided by the idea that you leave your full fingerprints on objects quite often, no matter where you go. Touched something? You got a fingerprint left there. With palm, how often do you press your full palm flat against something? And when you do it, it also gets rid of the natural curving of the palm that those air sensors detect (I assume). I can only think of door handles, but a lot of people don't use the full hand, and I think even out of those that do, they don't make full contact with the entirety of the door handle surface and their palm. If that was their guiding idea, then it is possible to be just as good at correctly identifying users, while also being less invasive in terms of privacy. Also, with fingerprints, there are already plenty of databases that have it, like, if you ever applied for TSA Precheck or if you had to get those prints taken for immigration paperwork or for passport or whatever. But there is no giant existing database of your palm 3D scans. And, as opposed to face scan, you cannot be identified by someone just looking at that scan and then encountering you on the street.

systemvoltage 6y ago

Year 2030. I kind of like the old school physical credit cards. It was fun to carry a wallet too. You could customize it, add a bit of flair and constantly obsess about making it thin. Good ol’ days.

toper-centage 6y ago
Yeah, but that's just simply inconvenient. When you look at a copyrighted building or hear a copyrighted song, you need a quick and integrated way to debit the royalties from your crypto wallet. How did folks do that in 2020? Did you have to enter your credit card details in hundreds of websites before leaving the house each day?
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  If you think that updating people's financial balance was difficult in 2020, wait until you hear how they updated their social credit scores. Basically, everyone had to write their thoughts down on one of a few government-approved social media websites, but the government would crowd-source most of the actual surveillance and punishment, by relying on mobs of users to "cancel" people who expressed the wrong ideas. Completely inefficient!

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1023bytes 6y ago

Worst name ever

IshKebab 6y ago
They're just feeling left out - everyone else has a product called "One". The next version will be called the Amazon One X 360 Series X.

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plumeria 6y ago

Will this service have a "forget me" button? I think this should be the first question addressed in their FAQ.

wooptoo 6y ago
Under the GDPR in EU or the DPA2018 in the UK you can request your data to be erased, corrected or you can grant limited access to your data. You also have the right to request that a decision to not be made solely using automated means. This is a good introductory article https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-do-i-make-a-subject-access-request https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-do-i-make... Too bad most of these companies operate based on the US legislation which doesn't grant the same consumer rights.
- 6d6b73 6y ago
  The question is - is picture/scan of your palm YOUR data? or is it Amazon's data? I'm sure corporate lawyers can find ways around simple things like GDPR.
dane-pgp 6y ago
It's not the first question addressed in the FAQ, but there is this answer: "Yes, you can request to delete data associated with Amazon One through the device itself or via the online customer portal at one.amazon.com. We believe customers should always be in complete control of when and where they use the service, and we designed Amazon One with this in mind." Perhaps, as the sibling comment suggests, this was an architectural decision made based on the requirements for operating in the EU.

poisonborz 6y ago

Coupling un-alienable, (purposefully) unchangeable biological marks to any account is always horrible idea. And not just the privacy part, for one, it can (only) be unwillingly altered (eg. by an accident), the same way as fingerprints, so a secondary backup code is needed anyway, making the whole setup a bad sort of convenience feature. The proper solution would be a safe hardware key mechanism.

dustinmoris 6y ago
That's just not true. By definition all our identities are basically linked to a biometric, namely our face. If you walk into your bank and want to withdraw a large sum from your account, someone at the counter looks at your face and a shitty small photo taken from you either on their system or on your passport to determine if there is a "face match". A proper technological solution to the current more insecure human verification process of your biometric is only an improvement, not a horrible idea as you suggest.
- schrodinger 6y ago
  Banks do that, but retail stores don't… yet. I think we accept a higher bar for authentication and security for a bank than we do for a retail store.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Yea but that was fixed with introducing pin numbers on debit cards. We haven't relied on manual authentication of transactions for decades, thank god.
BerislavLopac 6y ago
You don't need an accident. I was on chemo earlier this year, and I had to re-register my fingerprints both on my phone and on my laptop.
xorcist 6y ago
Also, Amazon (and any involved subcontractors) now have access to your palm, with the possibility of accessing any other system authorized by it. We tell users not to re-use their passwords, but the same goes for fingerprints too.

dfischer 6y ago

I certainly hope there’s alarms ringing in a few heads about this.

dane-pgp 6y ago
Well, it's not like they're literally requiring users to take a mark in their right hand.

immmmmm 6y ago

Researcher in biometrics working on contactless palm/finger recognition here. 1) A new innovation ok. People have been doing that for more than a decade, my group included. 2) Given the sensors look, it's almost certainly near infrared (NIR) camera, probably 850nm illumination and the dark surface is a NIR filter. 3) It certainly capture a mix between palm veins (850nm quite absorbed by de-oxygenated hemoglobin) and palm skin ridges. "Rather, the images are encrypted and sent to a highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud where we create your palm signature." 4) Weird approach to biometric template security to send palm picture to a server... 5) Curious how anti-spoofing is implemented, if at all. edit: less agressive

nakagin 6y ago
5) Are there any anti-spoofing measures already out there? It sounds like if there are, they can be easily bypassed...
- immmmmm 6y ago
  First time a phone was advertised unlocking with facial recognition, it took one day for researchers to unlock it with a printed photograph. Try that with modern phones.. I have done three years research on that topic: yes there are out there! Do they work: to some extent yes. Can it be bypassed: like any system yes.

ja27 6y ago

Is it discontinued yet?

nafizh 6y ago

'One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.' Umm, if this is true, how are you identifying the person then?

brian_herman 6y ago
Yeah, I was confused at this statement too.
n_t 6y ago
I think they are saying that humans cannot associate palm prints to an individual, unlike face (or even eyes in certain cases). It's just security by obscurity kind of thing but yes, not very convincing argument for privacy.
- strawberrypuree 6y ago
  This is a sleight of hand on Amazon's part. Humans looking at a palm print and identifying the person is not a concern, it's computers looking at a palm, associating it with a credit card, which can then open up a trove of behavioral data to push (i.e., ads) to people. It's disingenuous, like putting someone in a tiger cage and saying "Don't worry, there's no way you can drown in here -- we made sure there's no water."
BerislavLopac 6y ago
My guess is that they meant that a person couldn't determine someone's identity, unlike with, say, facial recognition.
IshKebab 6y ago
Perhaps using some electrical or acoustic properties? They're very cagey about how it works, so I doubt it is just a camera. > Q: What is the device actually scanning when it creates my unique palm signature? > > A: the technology evaluates multiple aspects of your palm Ok then.
hughw 6y ago

dustinmoris 6y ago

Similar to FinGo (https://fingo.to https://fingo.to) and Hitachi VeinID Five (https://digitalsecurity.hitachi.eu/products/veinid-five/ https://digitalsecurity.hitachi.eu/products/veinid-five/). All these new biometrics share one common theme: Better privacy for a user. FaceID has the problem that I can't hide it. As soon as I walk somewhere cameras can capture and match my face against their own records, however if I never registered my face ID with Amazon then they will know that I am possibly a recurring customer, but not know who I am. Palm IDs, VeinIDs, etc. are biometrics which I can easily hold back from disclosing. Only when I actively insert or present my finger/hand/palm I allow another device to scan my hand and do a match analysis. This means that I as a user am in better control of when and to whom I want to disclose my identity.

mmm_grayons 6y ago
Or we could (radical idea here) not use biometrics. I don't mean to be dismissive, but what advantage does this provide over opening a web site and hitting "pay" or maybe some sort of NFC tap? This looks like biometrics for the sake of being cool and flashy, which is not a trade-off I'm willing to make.
- suvelx 6y ago
  The only benefit I can think of, is that biometrics has no way of me loaning my credentials. If my age verification was tied to my palm, I'd have to cut off my hand to let a teenager buy booze with it. But I still don't feel this is a compelling argument.
  - mmm_grayons 6y ago
    I honestly don't care that much about kids buying booze. The "think of the children" argument also typically leads me to be suspicious of the motives of those that make it. Kids are going to drink if they want to; I didn't because I chose to do otherwise, not because I couldn't.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  Here's an example which something like Amazon One can solve, but a card cannot: When I go to the grocery shop and I buy alcohol then I have to wait at the self checkout till until a member of staff comes to verify my age before I can pay for my shopping basket. That involves me showing them an ID (e.g. my driving license) and them having to verify my biometric (face) by looking at me and then looking at my driving license. This is time consuming and requires additional staff at self checkout tills, making them less "self checkouty". On the other hand (or palm should I say :P) I could age verify myself only once at an Amazon One kiosk and then have my legal age linked to my verified palm. Now I can go and buy alcohol and when I present my palm then the checkout till knows that it's me (because unlike a driving license or credit card or phone I can't hand my palm to someone else). It knows that I'm of legal age to buy alcohol and therefore was able to do three things in one go: age verify, pay and reward points all via a single hand gesture. That is a win for the consumer and the shop as they don't need that extra staff anymore and there's less of a human bottle neck, leading to faster checkouts.

manigandham 6y ago

Terrible naming aside, the onslaught of biometrics everywhere is very concerning.

kleiba 6y ago
I recently attended a scientific conference on biometrics (I'm not from the field) and it was shocking to learn about all that stuff, both what's going on in the research community as well as on the law makers' side of things.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > as well as on the law makers' side of things. Anything you're allowed to share?
  - kleiba 6y ago
    Oh, there wasn't anything secret presented at the conference as far as I'm aware. It was a European conference and, for instance, I hadn't previously known about the Prüm Arrangements [1], or perhaps I had and forgotten about them. In any event I was not aware of the ability to freely share such highly private information about individuals across borders, and quite shocked to learn about it. Mind you, the majority of the attendants of the conference were absolutely uncritical about such regulations being in place. In fact, they were mostly in favor of them it seemed, which is not surprising given that that's what their research is based on. [1] https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/mayors-office-policing-and-crime-mopac/governance-and-decision-making/mopac-decisions-0/exchange-biometric-data-across-europe-prum-arrangements https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/mayors-office-policing-...

mdellabitta 6y ago

Interesting time to launch a product that involves everybody touching something.

doctorhandshake 6y ago
FTA: It’s contactless.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Is that your professional medical opinion, Dr. Handshake? More seriously, how successful do you think people will be at holding their palm above the device at a close enough distance for an accurate reading?

nakagin 6y ago

I still don’t get it: why would you choose something that’s so hard to change, if ever, for a store ID? It’s convenient but is it secure? There are photos of me waving with my palms out...

dustinmoris 6y ago
The photo of your palms out doesn't include an image of your veins because it wasn't taken with an infrared camera.
- nakagin 6y ago
  “ One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.” Wow. Never thought of that. But is it easy to reconstruct veins?
ctvo 6y ago
Do you really think this is a photo of your palm they're storing? No doubt there are 3D scanners (to map the elevation of your palms, the depth of the lines, etc.), infrared imaging and a slew of other minor sensors. To make this fast, they need to effectively correlate enough of the data to identify you without relying solely on a single thing.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  We already know there are solid theoretical basis for rebuilding 3d spaces from photos. Infrared imaging doesn't dramatically get different data from a regular camera except maybe picking up your veins a bit more clearly. There aren't a bunch of other sensors available.. probably some heat/temperature just to make sure it's a real palm but that's not for uniqueness.

elil17 6y ago

My college uses these to control entrance to the dining halls. The technology has been around for years and it works consistently and effectively. They want you to think this is something highly innovative but I’m pretty sure they’re just licensing already existing palm scanners.

joezydeco 6y ago
Were those dining hall scanners using a palm-on-glass technology, or mid-air like what Amazon is showing?
- elil17 6y ago
  Mid-air, exactly like Amazon's
  - notyourwork 6y ago
    I would love to see a picture of one.
    - elil17 6y ago
      https://www.idemia.com/innovation/morphowave https://www.idemia.com/innovation/morphowave Their product uses visual light to take the 3D scan (hence the green glow) but their patent filings cover a lot of related scanning techniques.
- catsdanxe 6y ago
  My college used mid air finger print scanners. It scanned all 4 finger prints and would let you pass even if you had a bandaid over one.
MisterPea 6y ago
A big thing though is how cheap they can make this. The Idemia one seems a lot more expensive. Driving down costs on existing technology is innovation. (Although who knows how much this actually costs to amazon)

ctvo 6y ago

This is a continuation of Amazon's remove all inconvenience strategy. And it'll work. You're waving your hand and walking through now, no more scanning, no more opening up an app, no more tinkering with your phone. By chipping away at each of these friction points, no manner how minor, their moat grows and customers will notice a difference between an Amazon retail store vs. a competitor's.

ragona 6y ago
What I think is interesting is that I suspect they’ll eagerly license this to competitor stores. A palm reader does not turn your local Safeway into Amazon Go, and they know that. Having a slice of every point of sale could be huge; imagine how much better this is than having to use FaceID during a pandemic. (Tap tap, pin, pin, tap is a LOT more friction than “hover.”) I’d pay for it if I ran a retail store. I wonder if Amazon will ever compete with Visa or other payment providers.
- barranger 6y ago
  "I wonder if Amazon will ever compete with..." Yes has to be the assumption at this point
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Visa can't be bothered to innovate. 90% of what Amazon has done should have been done by industry incumbents.
    - gonzo41 6y ago
      Well hopefully amazon will push enough of them to the brink of extinction that they to will innovate or suffer the fate of negative selective pressure.
      - anongraddebt 6y ago
        Often, you're too late and the cake is baked when innovation is reactive.

yalogin 6y ago

So far what Apple and other companies did is to keep the biometric auth tied to the device and not let leak out. Now Amazon is saying leaking it is the feature. They are using the hand as the identifier, so the biometric id is what is used to identify a person, not an email address, not a random number or a handle. The biometric data that cannot be changed ever is the identifier. It's very troubling. - The privacy and security implications are huge. - Its tied to commerce, not some airport entry thing. Commerce has legs. - On top of that its scary because Amazon can push this all over the world and give their tech for free to businesses. - Other companies will provide this "feature" too. The one door I was hoping will never be opened is opened now.

gonzo41 6y ago
This is the door you didn't hope was opened? So many other more terrible doors are open. Not saying this is great. But look at what social media is doing to the social fabric. This is just shopping.
- debrice 6y ago
  I would caution against such statement “this is just shopping”. Social media also used to be underestimated in the damage they can do. Privacy information brokers are like an Hydra, you cut one head, 3 new ones grow... and before you know it, your biometrics, bed time conversations, source of news, children habits... are up for sell because someone thought “it’s just X“ and underestimated what someone else can do with all the data they collected. I believe we need to change our optimistic attitude when it comes to individual privacy as we are nothing if not seeding the world of tomorrow, the world of the generations to come.
- dfischer 6y ago
  Purchasing behavior is literally what drives and directs the world today.
deleted 6y ago
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ncr100 6y ago

tomger 6y ago

I recognize the ease of use. I don’t have to carry a device with me. But looking a little farther in the future, will I loose the ability to not be able to authenticate anymore?

tinyhouse 6y ago

Not fully following what problem this is solving. I was in one of these Go stores and scanning the app to get in is convenient enough for me. Now, if you're telling me I can use this palm technology in almost every store I go to, then I can see the value. But if it's just for Go/Amazon/WHF stores then not so much.

arbitrage 6y ago

even though it's designed to have the user hover, people are gonna touch this anyway. and that's just gross.

karmasimida 6y ago

Not going to offer my biometrics this easily lol But good try

ncr100 6y ago
To me this is creepy. I am sure to "evolve" my thinking on it, but: I might consider cutting an artificial hand off a silicone doll and registering its hand print. Carrying a necklace of dismembered hands might creep out the store attendees & shoppers though.

DharmaPolice 6y ago

This is a little off-topic but can someone explain why some companies are hosting official content on domains that are similar to their real domains but not their actual domain? e.g. AboutAmazon.com or tescogiftcards.com - at first glance they look fake and it's additional step to verify they are actually affiliated with the company.

jedberg 6y ago
Usually this happens because a totally different departments runs the marketing site, and it's just easier to have their own deployment than integrate to the main site. In some cases it's a hosted CMS. Another reason is for cookie management. This way your cookies aren't sent to the marketing site. I'm not sure why Amazon does it though, as I think they're big enough to run their own CMS and therefore the cookie thing isn't really an issue.
advisedwang 6y ago
If a page hosted on amazon.com has security vulnerabilities, users real amazon accounts are at risk because of same-origin policy etc. Putting a page on a different domain eliminates this risk. Another reason is for branding. Using aboutamazon.com for PR fluff keeps amazon.com reserved for their actual consumer products.

throwtheball 6y ago

> palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm Isn’t this what the whole product is about, tying palm prints to identity? Maybe they are saying nobody else collects palm prints so others can’t tie to identity?

sschueller 6y ago

This is how the CIA/NSA get your hand print. No thanks.

Dig1t 6y ago

Very creepy, I will try my best to never use this.