Vending machines had eyes all over this Ontario campus -- until the students wised up

An Ontario university is pulling dozens of vending machines that were tracking the age and gender of customers in the latest example of pushback against technology that tests the boundaries of privacy rules.

The move comes amid opposition from University of Waterloo students, who became aware of the technology after a Reddit user spotted an on-screen error message on one of the machines earlier this month, about an apparent problem with its facial recognition program.

"The natural question that follows there is, 'Why does it have a facial recognition app? How can this error even exist?'" said River Stanley, a fourth-year computer science and business student who broke the story in the campus journal mathNEWS.

The university says it has asked that all 29 machines, from the Switzerland-based company Invenda, be removed "as soon as possible," and that the software be disabled in the meantime.

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The company says its technology is mainly used to tell when a person is standing in front of a vending machine, and to change the screen from "standby" mode, which shows ads, to "sales" mode, which shows different products.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/vending-machine-facial-analysis-invenda-waterloo-1.7126196