Wegmans Biometric Data: Facial
Your face may get scanned buying groceries. Some New York City Wegmans post a sign. The sign on the door says your face, eyes and voice may be collected. Wegmans says it only scans faces. And Wegmans won't say how long it keeps them. Was your face checked on your last trip? By the end, you'll be ready for a wrong match.
That's 3 parts of you on one sign. All 3 may be collected and stored.
The New York Civil Liberties Union reported the signs. CNN covered the story too. The signs hang at Wegmans in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
A 2021 New York City law requires that sign. So ask what that sign actually does for you.
Wegmans says it shares face data with no outsiders. Yet the sign says the data may be shared. And you can't get a new face.
Here's what happens at a Wegmans door.
You walk in with bags in your arms. Your child is asking for a cookie. The doors are already open.
Wegmans says the scans run in a small fraction of stores. Those stores have elevated risk, Wegmans says.
Wegmans says it looks for people previously flagged for misconduct. Your face becomes a string of numbers. Then those numbers get checked for the closest flagged face.
Wegmans calls a match one investigative lead. And nobody stops to read that small sign.
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You'd think a sign means you get a say. But the sign warns you, and it can't protect you.
Sellers of face scans brag about 95 percent. Some even claim 99 percent. That sounds like almost never wrong. Your alibi isn't part of that number.
Wegmans had a separate problem: a data leak, not a face scan. Data on more than 3 million customers was exposed. No face data was in that leak.
Wegmans had set up a cloud folder wrong. That folder sat open from January 2018 to April 2021.
Wegmans paid New York $400,000 in 2022. The state said hackers could have reached it.
The New York attorney general posted the details. Exposed data included driver's license numbers and passwords. A second open folder held names, emails and addresses.
Keep the leak and the sign apart. The leak was an open folder of records. The sign is about your face. Either way, ask how well a store guards what it holds.
So read the door sign and keep proof of where you were. If you see the sign, you can shop somewhere else.
Look for the sign before you walk in. Never hand over your license for a coupon. Keep proof of where you shop and when.
A face match only says who looks close. Your receipt says where you really were.
If police ever come, stay calm. Ask what evidence they have. Then ask for a lawyer. Don't argue the point on the sidewalk.
The CaraComp write up on this goes deeper on what to do. That write up walks through each step for your family.
People who study face matching follow one rule. A match is a lead, never a verdict. Someone still has to check where you were.
Tell your children to stay calm if staff stop them. Teach them to say they want a parent. Skip face or voice sign-ins when a password works.
Keep 3 kinds of proof. A receipt or your location history counts. A photo with a time stamp works too.
Your face may still be checked when you shop there. But now you know what to read, refuse and keep.
Tonight, write down where your proof lives. Tuck that note into your wallet. On your next trip, read the door first.
You may never know if your face was checked. So keep that proof ready, starting tonight.
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