Be careful when you shave...they could be watching!

[dudewithasock]

I’m not totally sure if this is supposed to be a joke or not…

From the site:

Hidden cameras in GILLETTE spy shelves take mug shots of people who pick up their products!

Consumers have asked Gillette to stop putting RFID “spy chips” in their products, but Gillette has ignored our concerns.

Don’t let Gillette spy on YOU next!

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, a technology that uses tiny computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items at a distance.

RFID “spy chips” have been hidden in the packaging of Gillette razor products and in other products you might buy at a local Wal-Mart, Target, or Tesco - and they are already being used to spy on people.

[ridingwithscissors]

hmmmmm…

joke.

…the sort of joke I’d set up:D

[dudewithasock]

This is one of the StumbleUpon reviews:

Yes, the information contained on this site is factual, true and backed up by open evidence. No, it’s not a joke (though I admit that was my immediate impression…naturally).
This site is run by CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) and is dedicated to exposing Gillette’s highly questionable integration of RFID tags in their products.

Anyone with an interest in their privacy, surveillance, and activists concerned with these subjects, should take a look at this.

RFID (Radio Frequency ID) is a relatively new technology which involves microchips as small as a speck of dust with their own unique, hard-coded identification number which can be read from a distance of up to 30 feet (10 meters), possibly further with more heavy-duty equipment. They run on the energy of the probing radio-wave from the reading station/device, therefore requiring no power supply, which allows for their minimal, practically invisible size and long lifespan. RFID uses a numbering scheme called EPC (Electronic Product Code), intended to replace today’s barcodes in products. These are small and cost-effective enough to produce to make tagging of trivial consumer products feasible. Quoting Steven Van Fleet (executive at International Paper): “We’ll put a radio frequency ID tag on everything that moves in the North American supply chain”.

Gillette has been implementing RFID tags in their shaving products, which come on stand-shelves that have integrated cameras. These have so far been distributed to an unknown number of locations. When a buyer removes a product, the RFID tag sounds off, signalling the camera to take a picture of the buyer. Of course, the RFID tag chip is perfectly functional afterwards, too.

Why should you care?
This in itself might seem harmless, though silly, but consider the implications of common products uniquely tagged and linked to the buyer’s credit card number, pictures from such things as Gillette’s stands (which verifies that it’s indeed the buyer in question, and not a card thief), and other things bound up with one’s identity, like passports, tollbooth autopass payment chips, etc. If/when RFID credit cards, identification/password schemes, etc. are commonplace, which implies the same for RFID-reading stations in shops, gates and such, it matters less what companies and products are involved in with the actual tagging, and more that each tagged product alone serves as a form of tracking device which will sound off at every single reading station, and which can be linked up to information of each other tag that’s simultaneously registered nearby it, yielding a long chain of tracking information about each individual consumer.

Second, knowledge of long-term effects and health concerns of the level of electromagnetic radiation exposure implicit in the number of reading stations the RFID proponents envision, is woefully inadequote.

Third, if you think spam and consumer tracking is annoying today, it’s nothing compared to what RFID tagging will turn the consumer market into if this is allowed to run unchecked.

… and the privacy concerns should be obvious.

This was also on the wikipedia page for RFID:

The potential for privacy violations with RFID was demonstrated by its use in a pilot program by the Gillette Company, which conducted a “smart shelf” test at a Tesco in Cambridge, England. They automatically photographed shoppers taking RFID-tagged safety razors off the shelf, to see if the technology could be used to deter shoplifting. This trial resulted in consumer boycott against Gillette and Tesco. In another incident, uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, shelves in a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, were equipped with readers to track the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick containers stacked on them. Webcam images of the shelves were viewed 750 miles (1200 km) away by Procter & Gamble researchers in Cincinnati, Ohio, who could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and observe the shoppers in action.

It could just be a pretty elaborate hoax, but I’m not really sure.

[johnfoss]

Uh, the shaver stand has a camera in it?

And if it takes a picture, then what happens? Internet connectivity? Cellular Internet? How does the picture get anywhere? What’s Gillette going to do with (yet another) picture of you picking up your shaver?

RFID tags have their upsides and downsides. But they have to be scanned to “report” on you. Don’t know how far away a scanning device has to be (can it be in a vehicle going down the street?). Certainly it’s not otherwise going to get scanned while it’s in your house.

Camera in the shaver stand? If the buyer doesn’t know it’s there, sounds like a big fat lawsuit. If the buyer does know it’s there, what the hell is it for in the first place?

[Tyler_N]

i think im gonna take apart one of my dads old razors

[ridingwithscissors]

i still reckon it’s just a beautifully laid hoax

[UniBrier]

@dudewithasock

Be careful when you shave…they could be watching!

Don’t you mean: “Be careful what you shave…they could be watching!”?

[monkeyman]

@UniBrier

Don’t you mean: “Be careful what you shave…they could be watching!”?

That’s actually what I thought it said at first read.

[maestro8]

While there may be some truth in the article, the site and text posted by Dude sounds very, very fishy… as if someone with very little technical knowledge was writing a scare piece featuring RFID.

RFID “spy chips” have been hidden in the packaging… and they are already being used to spy on people.

RFID chips don’t spy on people. They can’t. For one, they need to be scanned to be activated (they can’t self-activate), and the only information they can send is a pre-determined stream of numbers. Think of it as a fancy bar code. You ask the RFID for its code, it returns the code. Hardly a spy device by any means.

these chips can be read from a distance… it gives strangers x-ray vision powers to spy on you, to identify both you and the things you’re wearing and carrying

Now this is really starting to sound fishy. “X-ray vision powers”? WTF, is this a comic book or reality? The only way RFID chips can be used to “identify you” is if one has access to the sales database of the particular store that sold the RFID-enabled device to begin with. And that’s only if you happen to be carrying the product you bought. Also, only if the store collects your personal information.

Otherwise, all “strangers” can deduce are the products on your person, and then again, they’ll need access to some sort of RFID product database. The average Joe with a RFID reader would only get a jumble of numbers. Not very useful.

Unlike the bar code, RFID could be bad for your health… we and our children would be continually bombarded with electromagnetic energy.

Um, the sun continually bombards us with electromagnetic energy. Cell phone towers, power lines, microwaves, televisions and countless other devices bombard us with electromagnetic energy, and in greater “doses” than what is necessary to scan RFID chips. This is downright misleading.

Ugh. The more I read this drivel the more I want to give the author a good hard cockpunch.

[UniBrier]

It is a well known fact this is a new Urban Myth propagated by the Body Waxing Industry. Just another example of trash-talkin’ the competition.

[kington99]

@johnfoss

Uh, the shaver stand has a camera in it?

And if it takes a picture, then what happens? Internet connectivity? Cellular Internet? How does the picture get anywhere? What’s Gillette going to do with (yet another) picture of you picking up your shaver?

I’ve heard similar, but the suggestion then was that the shop display stand has a camera in it, not the stand for your razor that you take home. Obviously this could be wired to hardware and would give gillette a better idea of their customer base than they presumably currently have.

[johnfoss]

@kington99

I’ve heard similar, but the suggestion then was that the shop display stand has a camera in it, not the stand for your razor that you take home. Obviously this could be wired to hardware and would give gillette a better idea of their customer base than they presumably currently have.

Interesting.

But those aren’t customers, they’re people picking up a shaver. I guess that makes them potential customers. Still, not sure how a stack of pictures is useful for that.

Meanwhile, back at the RFID tags. It’s like a bar code that’s scannable. It’s embedded in either the product or the packaging. This has the potential for being very useful in terms of retrieving stolen property (though thieves would just remove them if they’re removable.

Mostly it’s to track inventory in the store. The questions arise from unintended uses after purchase. If the store connects your identity to the various products you purchase, they can build a “customer profile” of you. But they already do that if you use a store discount card or similar. That doesn’t bother me, I save a ton of money at Safeway and get a 15 cent/gallon discount on gas.

If it becomes a bigger issue, I imagine future laws will require the tags be removeable (like those tags on the mattress and pillows) so the customer has the option of getting rid of them. Or they could be attached to the packaging, like most bar codes are today.

[thejdw]

Weres the battery to transmit the signal? Or the gillet master transmitter?

[Triball]

Snap. Good to know where the taxpayers money goes to

[James_Potter]

Snopes?

[thejdw]

Well you think that is bad

[kington99]

tinfoil hats lads, they’re the only thing that will save you

[Tyler_N]

@thejdw

Well you think that is bad

lol

[leo]

jew star

RFID’s are in many new passports. What do you think about police being able to verify your ID without asking the card, just by scanning?
Now we can scan the ID, and so idententy their ausweiss.
I feel so much saver on the streets now!

I mean in the old days they just wore the yellow star.
But now that we have moslims, the should the red moon?
And female gays should have a pink triangle?
And male gays should have a brown star?
As you can couple other data to an RFID transmitted ID life is so much more comfortable!
If you can’t wait for the new fasicsts* you can sign up with clear-blue!

fact: ID’s in The Netherlands already tells the origin of any alien.
opinion: I think that’s worse than having an invisible jew star!
From there it’s easy to add any criminal record (keep in mind your mind may become a crime soon enoug).
You can add political preference (like it matters with the new voting computers).
Or sexual orientation (I’m curious if they gonne register the sick sexual orientation of some high dudes at public affairs).

no joke,
…but reality that can’t be stopped by just putting your passports and ID passed in the microwave (so that the RFID pops).

And talking about microwave’s…
do you seriously believe those pain-ray trucks, that the US army now got, will be used in a battle of army against army?
Or is this the 1st evidence the army is prepared for a cival war?
Or could we talk about a cival war if the army was rented from Blackwater USA, Inc. …?

If you watch the mirror tommorow morning, and see yourself with your Gilette, then please make a ridiculing grin about my reply, and wash away the shaving cream with water that is probably being fluorized.