A customer has sued Home Depot, claiming the retail giant has been secretly using facial recognition technology on customers with cameras placed at self-checkout kiosks.
Earlier this month, Benjamin Jankowski, a frequent Home Depot shopper, filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the company. He claims the retailer's self-checkout kiosks use facial recognition technology that scans and collects people's facial details without their permission.
In the lawsuit, Jankowski says cameras at the self-checkout captured his face, but the store never told him. According to a report by Law360, Jankowski noticed a camera and screen at a kiosk during a recent trip to a Chicago Home Depot. While checking out, he says a green box appeared around his face on the screen, which made him believe the system was recording his facial features.
Court filings include a photo Jankowski took showing the green box around his face. He says there were no signs or warnings to let customers know about any facial scanning. At that time, he says, no cashiers were available, leaving self-checkout as his only option.
The lawsuit alleges that Home Depot introduced and expanded its "computer vision" technology in 2024 as a way to reduce theft in stores. According to Jankowski, this system captures shoppers' facial geometry and stores it, in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). That law requires companies to tell people in advance if their biometric data will be collected, explain how it will be used, and obtain written consent. He claims Home Depot failed to do any of these things and has not made its policies about biometric data publicly available.
Jankowski wants to represent other shoppers who say their facial data was also scanned without consent at one of Home Depot's 76 Illinois locations. He is asking the court to award $1,000 per negligent violation of BIPA and $5,000 per willful violation.
The lawsuit comes after Rite Aid was banned from using facial recognition technology for five years -- after its "reckless" use harmed and harassed customers. Federal regulators say Rite Aid activated the face-scanning technology to identify people captured by surveillance cameras, in hundreds of stores between 2012 and 2020, in hopes of cracking down on shoplifters and other "troublemakers." But instead, Rite Aid's facial recognition system collected and stored images of people without their knowledge and generated thousands of false positives.