Chaayos Capturing Facial Data of Customers Without Explicit Consent

Fast nutrient and drinkable retail chain, Chaayos, has plant itself in a midst of controversy after journalist and MediaNama founder, Nikhil Pahwa, uploaded a video on YouTube, showing that the company has deployed facial recognition systems at its outlets. While the visitor claims that the new technology will enable seamless payments and faster checkouts, privacy advocates are sounding the warning bells at the new development.

. @Chaayos doing facial recognition instead of OTP. I took this video today.https://t.co/ecgOf56F2P

Issues:
1. No terms&conditions displayed
ii. Consent isn't real when in that location'southward no opt out option
3. We don't know if chaayos will sell this information/gives itself the right to

More than 👇

— Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin) Nov 20, 2019

As is existence pointed out by many on social media, not but is the company not seeking the explicit consent of customers earlier capturing their facial information, information technology is also not offering them an choice to opt out of the invasive biometric process. Yet, what's fifty-fifty more alarming is a paragraph from company's T&C page that says it cannot guarantee the customer data would always remain private.

Love your chai @Chaayos, but bring dorsum the phone number authentication.

Facial recognition is eerie & disturbing & should be opt-in.

The cashier at SDA refused to let me employ my existing @Chaayos wallet rest unless I annals my face up. #chaiSurvelliance #dystopian

— Ankit (@ankitmalik) November xvi, 2019

According to the company, "although Sunshine Teahouse (the belongings visitor of Chaayos) is committed to protecting client's privacy, Sunshine Teahouse does not promise or guarantee the aforementioned and customer should not expect, that customer'south personal data should always remain individual". What that ways is that the company may share your individual information with whatsoever third-political party for any reason at any given time without your consent.

However, the visitor denied some of those allegations in a statement to NDTV, maxim: "Data from the facial recognition feature is encrypted and cannot exist accessed by whatsoever political party, including Chaayos itself except for the purpose of logging-in our customers. There is no third political party sharing of the data for whatsoever purpose. And Chaayos does not utilize or process this information for whatsoever other purpose. Moreover, customers have the right to not opt in for facial recognition feature …".

It'due south not immediately clear when the technology was deployed, but a written report from Inc42 seems to suggest that information technology started at least earlier this month. In a country with no norms for facial recognition and no strict privacy laws to speak of, biometric data can be a ticking time-bomb, every bit has already been proven past the torrent of leaks from the Aadhaar database. That beingness the case, it will be interesting to see how this controversy pans out going forward.

Featured Image Courtesy: D for Delhi