Fraud Detection Should be Color Blind
By Julie Garcia, Marketing, Infoglide Software
As I read Tamara Dietrich’s article Attention shoppers: You’re all suspects (featured in one of our morning posts), my first reaction was, Wow, the store clerks she’s encountered seem to be especially vigilant. I’ve done a lot of those same behaviors and never felt the watchful eye of a retail employee. Check out some of the examples she cites:
“In one store, for example, I had to stoop to examine merchandise displayed on the lowest shelf. In seconds, a clerk appeared out of nowhere to watch me intently while I searched for L’Eggs nude pantyhose, size A.
“In another store, I needed a belt, so I began wrapping one after another around my hips to size them. At once, a clerk appeared to stand four feet away, arms crossed, staring as if she’d caught me trying to pull a fast one.
“In yet another store, I paid for my merchandise then walked away from the register. Suddenly the cashier snapped at me to come back, whereupon she grabbed a tag hanging from my slacks.”
That tag, it turns out, was the security badge for Tamara’s office.
I’ve been more aware of my behavior in retail stores since Infoglide Software has been in the loss prevention business, but even with this heightened awareness, I haven’t run into any evidence that my actions are being tracked.
When she wrote later in the article that the laws in Virginia are particularly strict, I thought perhaps that explains the difference in her experience and mine. But then she wrote what I think is probably the real reason for the scrutiny - “shopping while black.” Despite what you might assume by my last name, I’m white. I am married to a Mexican-American man though, and that has made me more aware of the differences in how people of color are treated versus white people. Being an optimist, I’d like to think that race/ethnicity doesn’t matter but, being a realist, I know it does.
It takes a long time to change people’s attitudes and prejudices. So it seems that the best way to change disparities in how people are treated is to remove the human element as much as possible. I don’t think that technology is the answer to all problems (my cell phone doesn’t even have text capability) but perhaps using technology to address issues like retail loss prevention, terrorist threats, and banking compliance will focus more attention on suspicious behaviors and connections and less on the color of someone’s skin.
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