A newspaper ran a story about a smart shelf test in which Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble infringed peoples privacy. Is that true?
No. Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble were testing a “smart shelf” a shelf with RFID readers built into it to see whether it could warn when the shelves would be out of stock of a particular shade of lipstick. A camera was used to verify the level of inventory on shelves. The shelf was not connected to a database and no information was collected on shoppers.
