Biometrics in Tobacco Sales
Tobacco use by minors often results in grave consequences, even though underage alcohol abuse constitutes the highest number of headlines. If the current pattern of smoking continues, almost 6 million of today’s teenagers can be expected to die a premature death from smoking-related diseases itself. Tobacco use by the under-aged is costing many families and communities dearly. The blame has been directed at retailers accused of their laid-back age-enforcement and sales policies. Nowadays, a group of retailers are ensuring that every customer purchasing tobacco, regardless of appearance, does meet the age requirements. They’re doing this with the help of a new biometric fingerprint ID technology that assures to change the way tobacco is sold. And these biometric systems can automatically identify a person based on the different physical characteristics such as fingerprints.
Biometric systems find use in a range of applications including the prevention of benefit fraud, protection of financial transactions, access control and network security enhancement. A fingerprint ID system for retailers who need fast and accurate age and identity verification to protect the humanity from underage alcohol and tobacco use has been developed. In a one-minute process, customers register, and volunteer their driving license number and a finger for digital scanning. The relevant information is read off the magnetic strip of the license card. While the machine does a scan of the person’s fingerprint, it never stores or uses the actual print. It creates 27 points of reference from the print image with which the information related to the details taken from a valid ID is matched. For increased privacy, print images are deleted at the end of every transaction.
After that, registered customers need to press a finger on a scanning device to verify they are above the age of 18 and are legally eligible to purchase tobacco. Any person not in the unique system is ‘carded’ at each purchase.
Customers as well as the community find that the new system is worth it, and it has been drawing a lot of support. Just by pressing a finger against a pad, customers can prove whether they are above the legal age in less than a second. This process has increased the efficiency by two-fold during the normal hours and up to six-fold during peak hours.
Various organizations have expressed their appreciation for the biometric system since it limits employee-discretion, error, and dishonesty related to tobacco purchase. Every customer needs to offer his or her finger or a valid ID to prove that he is of the legal age to buy it. The system verifies the age of the person automatically, thus freeing the salesman from making errors. Apart from this, in order to ensure honesty, the system asks employees to identify themselves by touching the soft pad and entering their respective codes, just before checking with the customers. Latest technology when combined with biometrics has proved that it can better protect both the society and retailers from the different dangers of under-age tobacco use.
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