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Fingerprint scans prevent over-tanning in the U.K.

Using fingerprints to allow access to spaces and services might bring to mind some kind of sci-fi thriller, but if you're thinking about going for a pre-summer tan at a U.K. beauty salon, you'd better get ready to step into the future.

Hundreds of tanning salons in the U.K. are now using fingerprint scanning technology for their check-in systems, reports the Daily Mail. Their reasoning? To prevent customers from fake-and-baking more than once a day and to prevent minors from borrowing their friends' membership cards to tan illegally.

One of the U.K.'s largest tanning businesses, The Tanning Shop, has already implemented fingerprint scanners in 70 per cent of its 90 locations. The scanners are actually very reasonably priced, which is probably part of the appeal, at less than $200 each. But the reason we haven't seen this technology elsewhere is because of the dangers of making your personal biometric information publicly available. What could happen if that information fell into the wrong hands?

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"Demanding customers hand over this kind of sensitive biometric data is both disproportionate and intrusive," says Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch, to the Daily Mail. "By taking fingerprints for such trivial purposes, they are jeopardizing the privacy of their customers for the rest of their lives."

Kate MacMillan, a solicitor who specializes in privacy law at Collyer Bristow, agrees that this is a dangerous habit to get into. "The only way you can control your private information is through preventing it reaching the public domain," she says.

At The Tanning Shop, new customers are asked to provide four scans of their fingerprints so the scanner can create a digital template that will allow the fingerprints to be recognized from then on. Their fingerprints are then linked to their records and tanning history and all sensitive data is encrypted and stored in a secure data warehouse, reports the Argus.

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Representatives for the business insist their system is safe and trust-worthy and claim client records are deleted when they're inactive for a year.

"The majority of clients embrace not only the convenience of this method, but the account security it affords them," says a spokesperson for The Tanning Shop to the Daily Mail.

Whatever the explanation, privacy-protection agency Big Brother Watch isn't buying it.

"This is a tanning shop, not a maximum security spy base," says Nick Pickles, director of civil liberties and privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, to the Argus. "It is an absurd use of technology that is intended to track people's behaviour."

Maybe tanning salons should leave the fingerprinting to the police.

What do you think about tanning salons scanning your fingerprints as a form of check-in? It may have come to0 late, as recent data shows skin cancer is on the rise for U.S. teens. See the news report below.