Ethical Issues - SCCapstone/EZBag GitHub Wiki

Privacy Expectations and Discrimination

While our app will enable employees to view the contents of any cart for a participating customer in the store, we will not provide any uniquely identifiable information (e.g. email addresses or phone numbers); carts will simply be associated with a random number which expires after the user’s session ends. However, we foresee the possibility that employees could harass or discriminate against a user by what they purchase. While the same could be done for self-checkout or normal checkout methods, users might have a greater expectation of privacy with scan-and-go.

To meet user’s privacy expectations, we plan to notify users on launch of the webapp that employees of the store may view their anonymized cart identification number and the contents of their cart upon checkout. This would ensure the user’s privacy expectations match that of other checkout methods. Additionally, the Terms of Use and Privacy statements for the EZBag web app will be available upon first opening the web app. User’s expectations of privacy on the platform will therefore be formally set in this way. As for possible harassment or discrimination, we have no more control of this than a business using any other checkout method.