You walk into a sales office looking to buy a home. You are approached by a friendly staff member with a tray of three different beverages on it. Over the next hour, he or she will help you think about where to go for entertainment on the weekend, where the kids go to school, and how to pay for the “best deal! “……
But chances are he won’t tell you that the ceiling camera is doing facial recognition on you while you’re thinking about the good life ahead.
“Face recognition even when you wear a mask on the sales floor! “” A killer sales office facial recognition system” …… to “Buy a house” plus “Face Recognition “as the keyword to search the Internet, such messages abound.
In the reporter’s investigation, a number of sales offices admitted to installing facial recognition systems, and some real estate insiders said, “Every company has a similar system! “. But experts warned, without the consent of consumers to capture their faces photos suspected of infringement, once the data leak great harm.
Recently, a “helmet to see the room “The little video is circulating on the Internet. The video also has the caption: “To protect your personal information, wear a helmet to the house. “
Real estate agent Yuan Yu told reporters, real estate enterprises to install face recognition system, with its “distribution model “About. Whenever a new property goes on the market, real estate companies will spend a lot of money on marketing and promotion to attract potential buyers on the one hand, and on the other hand, they will look for various selling platforms as “distribution channels If the buyer comes to the house from the real estate company’s promotion, it is called a “natural visitor”.
If buyers come to buy a house after reading a real estate company’s promotion, they are called “natural visitors”, which means that the real estate company’s marketing expenses are not wasted; if buyers are brought to the door by channel intermediaries, they are “channel customers”, and the real estate company should give the intermediaries a certain “benefit fee”, i.e., a commission.
In the past, there was a “scramble” between real estate enterprises and channel agents for customers. “It happens all the time. The face recognition, is to help real estate enterprises to determine what type of a certain buyer is, who is the customer, the commission should be sent to whom.
Now basically every developer has this facial recognition system,” said Xu Yifang, an employee of the real estate company, told reporters that without facial recognition, there would be a lot of “gray areas.
She said, for example, customer A and customer B came to the sales office, sales A received them, but only customer A registered information. When Customer B comes back, it’s with Agent B. Finally, Customer B closes the deal through Agent B. The agent is not the only one who can help. Finally, Customer B closed the deal through Agent B. When Sales A found out that he had received Customer B, he would think it was his customer, and Sales A and Intermediary B would argue.
Xu Yifang also mentioned that the commissions for real estate sales and channel intermediaries are different, and some buyers will go back to the intermediary after they have been to the sales office themselves. “The intermediary will give them some preferential sweeteners, but for the real estate company, the cost of this single sale becomes higher, spending marketing fees and paying more commission. “
Real estate agent Cheng Xin believes that in addition to real estate enterprises, intermediaries can also benefit from facial recognition. He told reporters that facial recognition can determine the time of the agent’s first viewing and the number of customers acquired. After an intermediary takes a customer to see a house for the first time, the real estate enterprise will provide a two- to three-month protection period for the intermediary. During this period, even if other intermediaries take away customers and sign a contract, they will not get a commission.
The reporter found that in order to meet the needs of real estate enterprises, a number of companies have launched a “face recognition channel wind control” products, and the market is spread very large.
In order to meet the needs of real estate enterprises, a number of companies have launched “face recognition channel wind control” products, and the market has spread very large. The company claims on its website that the product has covered “80+ “City,” “1100+ “Project. (hereinafter referred to as “Damai”). “) is introduced, after the epidemic, the viewer often wears a mask, but its system in Jiangmen JunJing Bay Group – the peak project on line for a month, the recognition rate is still as high as 97.77%.
Recently, the reporter contacted Ming Source’s sales representative, Chen Bing, in order to purchase the product. According to Chen Bing, Mingyuan’s face recognition system is divided into two parts: software and hardware, including a number of partner manufacturers: the camera and other hardware customized with Kuangvision, the algorithm and Huawei cooperation, the data cache in Aliyun.
“We have done tests, can identify 50 people at the same time, wearing a mask can also be identified. “Chen Bing said, unlike traditional security video, the system can identify and predict the path of action of the watcher, box the necessary route, set the camera to capture. After shooting, the system will automatically select one or two “optimal photo The system will bind the ID information to the previous records.
When you are looking at the house to buy a house, you can use the ID card machine to verify your identity, the system background will bind the ID card information to the previous record, “the equivalent of a person, face, cell phone number, all visit the record to compare.
When the reporter takes the aforementioned “wearing a helmet to see the room”, the system will bind the ID card information to the previous record. “The video of the example, the viewer may have privacy concerns, Chen Bing said, facial recognition cameras and surveillance cameras look the same, can be the whole “senseless. “Snapshot. “They are unaware of it, and they did hear about related cases before, but they are slowly disappearing now. “
In order to experience the effect of senseless snapshot, the reporter pretended to look at the property and came to the China Railway Construction – International Mansion (hereinafter referred to as “Tiejian”) in Beijing’s Daxing District. “) sales office. Mingyuan products are being used here.
During the one-hour experience, the reporter saw several products labeled “Kuangvision “There are three cameras on the first floor and at least two in the second floor model room area. But neither at the sales office door nor inside the building are there any facial recognition prompts at the cameras, and salespeople don’t mention facial recognition.
In order to more fully demonstrate the system’s functionality, Chen Bing showed another background screenshot of the project.
The screenshots show that Chen Bing, who is wearing a mask, was captured three times in 33 minutes, and the time of each capture, the photo, the comparison of the base image taken by the ID camera, and the facial resemblance are listed.
In addition, the system has a “view short video” function, and one of the videos shows Chen Bing walking into the door of the sales office from off-screen.
A knowledgeable netizen mentioned that her husband once accompanied a friend to look at the house, did not take the initiative to leave any information. This year two couples buy their own house, looking for an intermediary, also negotiated a “return point “. But after they made the down payment, the agent said, the two were locked into the sales by the facial recognition system on the previous reception of a friend, who did not belong to his customers, and could not return the point.
Experts: sensorless snapshot is not compliant, allegedly violating consumer rights
One of the biggest selling points of the so-called facial recognition channel wind control product is the sensorless capture: Chen Bing mentioned this several times in his pitch to reporters, saying it would improve the customer experience.
How long will face data be stored at the sales floor? Chen Bing said that facial data and cell phone numbers “are permanently stored. However, within a real estate company, access to data is generally available only to designated management.
Experience “sensorless capture” in the field “After, the reporter as a home viewer to call the iron construction sales office, asking about facial recognition. The staff acknowledged the existence of the system, but argued that the sales office did not conceal the customer, “there is a camera in the entry position ” – She believes that the viewer will see the camera and realize that their face will be captured. Only viewers who are sure of the deal will be asked to enter more specific personal information, such as their ID card.
However, when the reporter asked for the face image to be deleted, the staff member said that if the group checks the information and finds that the video is missing, “some leaders will definitely be told and there may be penalties “. Therefore, she declined the reporter’s request and admitted that the information would not be deleted in the short term.
It should be noted that different real estate and technology companies do not say the same thing about the duration of data storage. After visiting Tiejian, the reporter called some sales offices of Vanke and Poly as a home viewer, and several sales said they do have face recognition systems. A salesman said that the face data of channel customers will be saved for a month, while the data of natural visitors will be saved permanently and cannot be deleted.
The staff of Damai, whose products are similar to Mingyuan’s, said that the facial photos will be stored in the cloud for one year.
Is it an infringement of the sales office to use the facial recognition system to capture the viewers without any feeling?
The Cybersecurity Law and the Civil Code already provide that the collection and use of personal information shall follow the principles of lawfulness, legitimacy, and necessity, and that the rules of collection and use shall be made public, and the purpose, manner, and scope of collection and use shall be clearly stated, with the consent of the person to whom the information is collected.
The “Information Security Technology Personal Information Security Specification” (hereinafter referred to as the “Specification”), which came into effect on October 1, 2012, provides more detailed operational guidelines: before collecting personal biometric information, the purpose, manner and scope of collecting and using personal biometric information, as well as the storage time and other rules shall be separately informed to the subject of personal information, and the express consent of the subject of personal information shall be obtained.
The sales office staff’s claim that “when a buyer sees a camera, he or she knows the face being taken” is completely unjustified, according to experts.
The App Governance Working Group expert, He Yanzhe, believes that the main “senseless The collection and processing of personal information by the “face recognition” service has obvious compliance problems: the viewer is neither separately informed of the purpose, manner, and scope of the collection and use of his or her personal biometric information, nor is express consent obtained from the subject of the personal information. In addition, facial recognition distinguishes between different types of viewers, offers different incentives, and “price and service discrimination”. “The suspicion.
In his view, the sales office could have taken a more transparent approach: staff informed the viewers of the existence and use of facial recognition before they entered the sales office, allowing the viewers to make their own choices.
Zuo Xiaodong, vice president of the China Information Security Research Institute, pointed out that the purpose of using facial recognition systems in sales offices is to safeguard their own interests, not to protect the rights and interests of users, so the legitimacy and necessity of using such systems is questionable. The practice of directly uploading the photos of house viewers’ faces to the cloud will also pose a high security risk.
“The facial recognition data security standards currently being developed by the state have strict requirements for data storage, transmission, and destruction. Relevant companies should consider these questions: is it necessary to store data permanently? Is there an agreement with the user? “Zuo Xiaodong pointed out that in the housing sales scenario, the viewer’s face information will be associated with other personal information, and once the relevant data is leaked, it is extremely harmful.
Xiong Dingzhong, chief partner of Beijing Qinglou Law Firm, believes that the sales office’s sensorless snapshot has violated the rights and interests of the personal information of the house viewers, “the infringement and the result of the infringement is very obvious”, it is worth exploring what infringement subject.
“The organization of the sales office is certainly the first person responsible for the infringement. A more interesting question is whether the technology provider of facial recognition is infringing. Personally, I think it is important to focus on the subjective intent and negligence of the provider of the technology. Although they don’t necessarily know where they will end up when they sell their products and technology, they have a legal obligation to check whether the recipient has fulfilled its reasonable obligation to protect personal information, and whether their actions are contributing to the recipient’s contributory infringement. “Xiong Dingzhong said.
Zuo Xiaodong suggested that any organizations and enterprises should be cautious in using facial recognition systems and need to carefully evaluate their legitimacy, necessity and safety before using them. “Users have the right to know. If it is really necessary to use it, the user’s consent should be obtained. “
(Yuan Yu, Cheng Xin, Xu Yifang, and Chen Bing are pseudonyms)
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