29 vending machines across the University of Waterloo have been promptly removed for tracking the age and gender of its customers.
A student who goes by ‘SquidKid47’ on Reddit noticed an error message from an internal application on one of the on-campus vending machines. “Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognition.App.exe” was the name of the executable that was causing the error.
Image credit: SquidKid47 on Reddit
Invenda Group is the name of the company that makes these vending machines, and ‘FacialRecognition.App.exe’ is pretty self-explanatory.
These vending machines, unbeknown to students, had been using facial recognition to track the age and gender of patrons, as shared by CTV News. However, according to Invenda, the machines use facial analysis and not facial recognition to understand when a person is standing in front of it. The company also said that its vending machines don’t store any data or photos.
The University of Waterloo said that it is dealing with the situation and has started by removing 29 Invenda vending machines from the campus.
River Stanley, a writer for the student publication MathNews, investigated the matter. You can read more about it here.
Image credit: Shutterstock
Source: MathNews, Reddit (SquidKid47) Via: CTV News
