I haven’t talked about vein biometrics in a while, so it’s good to catch up on an old Biometric Update article about Saint Deem.
“China has its first factory dedicated to manufacturing vein biometrics hardware, which will produce up to 2 million vein modules and devices a year. The factory is built by biometric technology firm Saint Deem, which develops vein recognition algorithms, software and hardware.”
I’m surprised that we haven’t seen a vein biometrics factory before now. Vein identification has been around forever. And if Amazon isn’t getting its devices from China, who is supplying them?
With all the news about Amazon Fresh closing and more Amazon layoffs taking place, I missed a bit of news about the Amazon One palm-vein technology. But first a bit of history.
“While the idea of contactlessly scanning your palm print to pay for goods during a pandemic might seem like a novel idea, it’s one to be met with caution and skepticism given Amazon’s past efforts in developing biometric technology. Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology, which it historically sold to police and law enforcement, was the subject of lawsuits that allege the company violated state laws that bar the use of personal biometric data without permission.”
Yes, Amazon was regarded as part of the evil fascist regime even when Donald Trump WASN’T in office.
Amazon One in 2025
Enrolling.
Which brings us to 2025, when Trump had returned to office and I enrolled in Amazon One myself to better buy things at the Upland, California Amazon Fresh. But the line was too long so I went to Whole Foods, where my palm and vein may or may not have worked.
“Amazon One palm authentication services will be discontinued at retail businesses on June 3, 2026. Amazon One user data, including palm data, will be deleted after this date.”
Of course, in Amazon’s case, “limited” may merely mean that billions and billions of people didn’t sign up, so it jettisoned the technology in the same way it jettisoned dozens of stores and thousands of employees.
The June date may or may not apply to healthcare, but who knows how long that will last.
So what now?
In my 2021 post I mentioned three other systems that used biometrics for purchases.
There was the notorious Pay By Touch (not notorious because of its technology, but the way the business was run).
“But the most common example that everyone uses is Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or whatever ‘pay’ system is supported on your smartphone. Again, you don’t have to pull out a credit card or ID card. You just have to look at your phone or swipe your finger on the phone, and payment happens.”
And they’re so entrenched that even Amazon can’t beat them.
Or as I said after the latest round of Amazon layoffs:
“This, combined with its rebranding or closure of all Amazon Fresh stores, clearly indicates that Amazon is in deep financial trouble.
“Bezos did say that Amazon would fail some day, but I didn’t expect the company to fall apart this quickly.”
“After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores.”
Even though the Just Walk Out system was a model of zero friction, it was also a model of zero information.
“It’s masterful, really. You just throw your purchases into your cart, and a battery of cameras record and price everything automatically.
“In reality, a battery of cameras and third world workers record and price everything semi-automatically. But I digress.
“Anyway, all your purchases are recorded and totaled, and your payment method is charged as you just walk out.
“THEN you find out how much you just spent.”
Too late?
In contrast, the lower tech Dash Cart solution—shopping carts with scanners—allows customers to “scan items as they shop, view their basket total in real time, and pay using contactless payment at the end.”
High friction because the shopper has to scan every item instead of letting “AI”—either cameras or low-paid remote employees—do the work.
But the shopper has immediate information.
Writing through the words
And I need immediate information while performing Bredemarket work.
…I currently charge $500 for the short service and $2.000 for the other. And if a particular work product falls between these two word counts, I charge accordingly.
The upshot is that I have a vested interest in knowing the number of words in my Microsoft Word documents.
I can go to the Word Count menu item and get the word count.
Or for working documents in which the seven questions (and more) are embedded in the bottom of the file…
…I just select the portion of text that contains the work product itself, go to the Word Count menu item, and get the word count of only the selection.
Or I can use fields. On a recent project, I used a Word field, NumWords, to display the word count without requiring me to go to a menu item or select anything.
There’s only one problem with using fields: NumWords is static and requires me to manually refresh the field to update the current word count.
But Microsoft Word lets you do things several different ways.
I could bypass menu items and fields altogether if I would simply remember to look in the lower left corner of my Microsoft Windows desktop app for Word, where the word count has been displayed all along.
Microsoft Word page and word counts, automatically updated.
Long-time Bredemarket fans may recall when Bredemarket established and publicized annual goals. I haven’t publicized my overall goals since 2022, but I am publicizing these two tactical goals for 2026 to (1) hold myself accountable, and to (2) enlist your help. Both are awareness goals, designed to bring Bredemarket to the attention of the identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who are my hungry people.
Tactical Goal 1
In calendar year 2026, achieve 100 WordPress views (as measured by “Most Viewed,” not “Most Downloaded”) for each of the three “essentials” videos:
You can help me realize my goals by doing one or both of the following (I ask, then YOU act):
If you have not seen all three of these videos yourself, visit either the Bredemarket blog post or the YouTube playlist and view the ones you haven’t seen. No need to view the ones you’ve already seen; I’m interested in meaningful views, not statistical inflation.
Share the videos with identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who can use Bredemarket’s services.
For me, 100 or 1,000 annual views of a video is a stretch goal. Even looking at lifetime statistics, my most popular WordPress video, my discovery of the Amazon Fresh Upland opening, has less than 100 views, and my most popular YouTube short, the metal strips that protect palm trees from squirrels, has less than 3,100 views. (I believe my most popular video ever was my Instagram reel of the San Antonio Avenue bridge: over 6,800 views.)
I’ve talked at length about the new Amazon Fresh store in Upland, even before it opened. Now that it’s been open for over a half year, I was wondering how others felt about the store.
The average Yelp review, based upon 51 reviews as of December 18, is about a 3.5, which is good. But what’s interesting is the polarity of the reviews, with 28 5-star reviews and 12 1-star reviews.
You can’t please everybody, but some of the 1-star reviews are interesting.
“very, very few employees at this location are incompetent and have no customer service skills. also no manners or decency.”
I think the reviewer meant “competent,” but hey.
“No matter what time of day I go there, there are always workers blocking the isles with large carts. That makes it impossible to shop.”
Again, “aisles.” But the reviewer noted a common complaint: the store appears to prioritize delivery orders over people coming in-store to shop, and multiple reviewers have noted the rudeness of the workers fulfilling delivery orders.
And apparently the rudeness does not coincide with speed.
“The order wasn’t ready for pickup hours after scheduled”
However, this particular review was written just a few days after the store opened, so some hiccups are expected.
Google Gemini.
And those who love the store LOVE it.
“Nice clean store. Cheap prices. The dash cart is awesome. Very helpful employees.”
And
“The store is clean, spacious, and very easy to navigate. Shopping here is simple and enjoyable. The staff is friendly and ready to help, which made the experience even better.”
So it appears that experiences can vary anywhere. Hopefully this store will last longer than the La Verne one.
That’s why more secure firms practice continuous authentication for high-risk transactions.
But continuous authentication can be intrusive.
How would you feel if you had to press your finger on a fingerprint reader every six seconds?
Grok.
Enough of that and you’ll start using the middle finger to authenticate.
Even face authentication is intrusive, if it’s 3 am and you don’t feel like being on camera.
Now I’ve already said that Amazon doesn’t want to over-authenticate everything.
Grok.
But Amazon does want to authenticate the critical transactions. Identity Week:
“Amazon treats authentication as a continuous process, not a one-time event. It starts with verifying who a user is at login, but risk is assessed throughout the entire session, watching for unusual behaviours or signals to ensure ongoing confidence in the user’s identity.”
That’s right: Amazon uses “somewhat you why” as an authentication factor.
Perhaps I’m industry-embedded, but this seems fine to me. Consent appears to be honored everywhere.
“Under the deal, agencies that use Flock’s Nova or FlockOS investigative platforms will soon be able to post Community Requests through Ring’s Neighbors app, asking nearby residents to share doorbell footage relevant to an investigation.
“Each request includes a case ID, time window, and map of the affected area. Ring says participation is voluntary and that residents can choose whether to respond, and agencies cannot see who declines. Users can also disable the feature entirely in their account settings.”
On the other hand, Senator Ron Wyden doesn’t trust Flock at all and says that “abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable.”
Heck, abuse of citizens by the U.S. Senate is inevitable, but citizens aren’t demanding that the Senate cease operations.
Biometric Update reports that Amazon’s Ring products are offering a feature called “Familiar Faces.”
“In September, Amazon revealed a revamped Ring camera lineup featuring two notable AI features, Familiar Faces and Search Party. Familiar Faces uses facial recognition and lets users tag neighbors or friends so future alerts identify them by name rather than generic motion.”
Bredemarket 