Scanning Your ID at Bars Sucks for Your Privacy
We’ve all been there, maybe you were a little too much to drink and the bouncer is questioning your balance as they scan your ID. Unfortunately, in at least some US cities, simply interacting with a bouncer that went wrong can mean getting kicked out of bars throughout the city; As OneZero first reported, at least one ID scanner company is taking visitors’ personal data without their knowledge or consent and creating a network of blocked customers, all with the flick of a finger.
The PatronScan company in question operates in several bars across the country, sending data from these familiar handheld devices for identity scanning. (They also have larger scanning kiosks.) The technology is designed to check authentic IDs from fake ones, but it also preserves basic demographic information about each of its users, including age, gender, and date of birth.
PatronScan also collects any data about the bars you were in that night (presumably only those that use their technology). While it is unclear how many cities PatronScan operates in, they store this information for 90 days by default and 30 days in California, where the law has been changed for privacy reasons.
On the surface, collecting your personal information – and what you were that night – already sounds terribly aggressive. (However, PatronScan claims they do not store addresses.) And it is also unclear how else this data is used; According to OneZero , it can be provided to law enforcement agencies upon request, but who will stop them from selling it to third parties?
But it only gets worse.
If you have ever been banned by a bar that uses PatronScan, you will also be banned from visiting any other establishment using the same technology; this can be done at the discretion of a single bouncer or bartender who can report you via the device for reasons such as fights, public drunkenness, drug dealing, and the general category “other”. In theory, this is a noble cause; You can ban the worst, loud or otherwise drunk people you can encounter, but consider how this can be used to ban entire groups of people from racist bars.
“The ban criteria are unclear and are determined on an individual basis by thousands of different bar employees with different standards and motives, “ writes OneZero’s Susie Keigl . “Basically, there is nothing to prevent an attacker from using PatronScan for discriminatory purposes under the guise of security.”
PatronScan claims that 40,000 users have been blocked on its sites. And in Sacramento, California, which recently required some businesses to use technologies such as PatronScan to verify IDs, the average ban given to customers is 19 years , a number provided by PatronScan’s own Public Safety Report ( can be viewed on OneZero, too).
If you want to avoid being banned from nightclubs for 19 years, it’s easy: before entering a bar, ask if they plan on swiping your ID and with what technology. If it’s PatronScan, it might be worth reconsidering the decision to visit the bar altogether. Of course, in a big city like New York, it might not be possible to avoid hand-held ID scanners altogether if you want to wander around the bars for a bit. If so, your next step might be to show humility the next time the bouncer decides you’ve had enough.