Supermarket giant ASDA has responded after shoppers were left furious over fears its self-checkout cameras had been filming them without permission. The retailer has spoken out after a video of a shopper slamming the self-checkout cameras went viral.
Anyone who has used a self-checkout in ASDA supermarkets will be familiar with the cameras. They film your face up close, and they're highly unflattering.
But beyond ASDA's cameras making you look like a bad episode of Catfish, shoppers have shared some very real concerns about their privacy. A now-debunked video has been shared across social media questioning what exactly the purpose of the cameras is.
The video was viewed over 360,000 times on Facebook and in it, the woman complains about the new self-checkouts being installed at her local Asda. She shared her "viewpoint" on the fixed cameras, which shows people themselves as they scan their products through.
The woman said: "What is basically happening, and this is my viewpoint, you’ve got a picture of your face, your debit card information and everything you’ve bought. Now, this is for as far as I’m concerned, targeted advertising…But I’ve never given anybody permission to take my data in that way."
She added: "And under GDPR, unless you’ve given permission, they cannot do it." However Asda confirmed to Full Fact that this was not the case and that the camera and screens are there purely to deter thieves from stealing. It added that they don't actually store any footage that appears on them, other than the store's traditional CCTV systems, reports the Mirror.
"We have no technology in our stores that could take an image, store it, and then compare it to other images to spot when a ‘recognised’ face comes into our store," an ASDA rep told Full Fact.
"The cameras use AI to focus on faces—you might see a green box around the face—but again this footage isn't recorded or stored." The post shared by the woman has now been flagged as false by Full Fact experts. However it has already been shared more than 8,000 times and has almost 10,000 likes and 1,300 comments.
READ NEXT:
