An observant shopper has noticed that the SmartScreens installed in Westfield shopping malls have been secretly filming users.
The below video, posted to TikTok, zooms in on the keyhole camera, with commenters claiming it was used for everything from security to monitor shoppers’ eyes to see if they are paying attention to the advertising.
@dsanka##westfield ##hiddencamera ##facialrecognition
There are 1,600 of these SmartScreens across 42 Westfield malls in Australia and New Zealand.
A spokesperson from Scentre Group, who owns Westfield, said the cameras are to capture “anonymous customer data” which is then analysed.
“Delivering a superior customer experience across our portfolio of 42 Westfield Living Centres is dependent on access to dynamic customer insights,” the spokesperson said.
“This data helps inform discussions with our business partners – retailers and advertisers – so that we are able to curate the right mix of retailers, brands and services into our centres for our customers.
“Our SmartScreens use audience measurement and image processing software to aggregate the number of people passing a screen, as well as determine how many people have looked at the screen.
“These technologies do not identify individuals, or record or retain images of individuals.”
