Retailers urged to create 'CCTV-like' symbol to inform customers of mobile tracking Retailers have been urged to create a standard symbol, similar to the one used to denote the use of CCTV, to inform customers that their location within shopping areas is being tracked through their mobile device. The recommendation was contained in a new working paper that has been issued by an international working group on …
Lets say you want to ise the free wifi at Ikea. (If god forbit the significant other drags you there by the hair for instance). You can't actually connect unless you install their app AND create an account. Now they have your phone info, your identity, your contacts list (yes, it wants access to that) and much more. And on top of that they have the kit to track you through the store by the centimeter. The better to speay you with annoying adds for that strange doohickey you spend 2 seconds longer looking at because you were wondering what Idiot would buy such a thing.
"(Who has a phone with enough battery to go round with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on all the time anyway?)"
And I switch them both off unless necessary to reduce my exposure to dodginess. I don't know if I can be hacked through Bluetooth, but I don't feel like finding out would be a good experience.
Dan 55 "Who has a phone with enough battery to go round with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on all the time anyway?"
(Tentatively raises hand...)
I've never owned a smartphone where Wi-Fi and Bluetooth weren't both turned on continuously from Day 1.
Sit in car, Bluetooth connects. Come home, Wi-Fi connects. No need to enable.
What are you doing wrong?
"Whatever he's doing wrong, I'm doing wrong too. In spades."
Android?
It seems that many phones using the Android have 'baseband' chip sets designed and programmed by idiots. Nothing to do with the OS itself as such.
Some of my coworkers have phones that'll drain the battery in two hours if they leave it in their cubicle, with no service. The phone seemingly goes insane screaming out a watt of RF in some inexplicable attempt to wake up the nearest tower. Other phones don't do this, and their battery will last all day in the same situation.
It seems that y'all have fallen victim to the same sort of bad design.
In summary, there are some very badly designed and programmed phones. ***And it's nothing to do with the OS itself.*** There's many other layers of software hidden in chip sets, especially the RF 'baseband' chip set, where bad design can be obvious.
Something to watch out for.
Thankfully, I've never owned such a phone. I've had (and have) a half dozen and none of them exhibit any such nonsense.
I'm surprised IKEA have an app you can install. Knowing them I would have expected to be given a load of source code, a compiler and instructions on how to build it myself
And you always end up with a couple of spare function calls, for some reason...
"Lets say you want to ise the free wifi at Ikea. ... You can't actually connect unless you install their app AND create an account. Now they have your phone info, your identity, your contacts list ... and much more. And on top of that they have the kit to track you through the store by the centimeter."
Well, that just means that it is NOT free, doesn't it?
"Well, that just means that it is NOT free, doesn't it?"
Yes, I think we reached a point quite some time ago that the word "free" in terms of marketing needs to be more clearly and legally defined. Data has value. Personal data has more value. Giving something of value in exchange for, or having it taken under the guise of being offered a "free" service, should never be be advertised as free. We may need a new word for it. Barter doesn't really cut it.
"Yes, I think we reached a point quite some time ago that the word "free" in terms of marketing needs to be more clearly and legally defined"
Yes, quite. In exactly the same way that "no added sugar" now almost always means "we added masses of chemical sweeteners instead".
This is why the 'sugar tax' proposal is full of fail.
So to be tracked you have to: a) install the retailer's smartphone app; b) have Bluetooth and/or WiFi on. Hmm, I think I see an easy way to avoid being tracked.
I know that it is easier to leave everything turned on, but this is a wakeup call to stop being tracked by * everyone* - just turn it off when you're out and about.
What you didn't say was that you can read all the Contactless Chips in our Credit cards while you are at it.
Or perhaps you didn't want to get your collar felt by the Plod?
Building kit like this is hardly something to boast about in these parts IMHO.
I'm glad that my phone isn't smart and that my Credit Cards are kept in an RDIF blocking wallet.
Look, I use Here maps app for maps, I use Duck Duck Go for searches, Firefox mobile for browsing. I use Google for *nothing*, but yet if I try to disable its Google Play spyware, it will uninstall all of my chosen apps.
And if I try to turn on location on an Android phone, it asks "do I agree to let Google use my location, Yes/not now", it never lets me say "no", and looks like I have to agree to Google having my location.
That smirking robot logo is the icon that represents surveillance. And most of the apps on your phone, you never agreed to. e.g. 'Line' usually comes pre-installed and reads your browser history, did you agree to that? Who would even make an OS that would let apps watch your browsing history? Google would, the worlds biggest surveillance company!
Retailers make surveillance apps, because your phone lets them do it, and the regulation on privacy is such a joke that there are no legal repercussions!
So this logo surely represents surveillance:
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ipadevice.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F12%2FAndroid-Logo.png&f=1
Staying anon on this as work in industry that does installations in stores.
But who? Everyone they are all over the place you may as well assume every chain has them or is looking into them or has thought about it. I alway turn of wifi if I don't need it they will pick up your mac even if you don't connect to their wifi.
Ever been offered free wifi? Think the routers just connect you to the net? Wrong.
"The use of air-gaps to create a non-contiguous data collection area"
And they should have to paint the floor exactly where the collection zones are and where the air-gaps are. So Rooted Phone, check. busybox, check, spoofed MAC, check. Now at every dead spot I can change my MAC. Depending how good their tracking software is will they have a duty of care to send security guards to the deadspots to find people who have been there for hours?
OR I could just turn off wifi/bluetooth when I am not using them so my phone isn't blurting traceable data all over the place.
Why bother disabling Wifi, BT etc When according to the A/C above he builds kit that can defeat it
I read it on the internet so it must be true?
Sorry AC, no reason to doubt you personally, but were I worried about this I think I'd do my own research rather than accept what you've said verbatim.
IIRC your wifi is never "off" on modern phones. They have the ability to wake it up and check things. Depends on manufacture and OS I suppose. Google like their data collection too, and other times it's to check for updates. But it's not unheard of.
The other thing is external tracking is not the same as internal. Some stores were spoofing local wifi/telephone masts (I forget which) to get tracking data on shoppers without the need for an app internally on the device. They just used normal triangulation and signal strength etc.
I'd not think it too impossible that Anon can track an antenna within X distance even when unpowered. If though they are doing anything more untoward, then more fool them.
Thanks for the downvote, whomever did it. :P
But yes, is /should/ stay turned off. Things like the Avast app can turn it back on to check for anti-theft/lock requests
Previous versions of the OS "KitKat has a feature where, when Wi-Fi is turned off, it periodically scans for networks to allow Wi-Fi-based location detection to work."
Yet more network providers may add their own apps to turn wifi on when they want updates and/or check for voip etc or whatever they decide is in vogue this week.
Joe Average consumer who has the retailer "shopping list" app which doubles up as an internet shopping, shipping and store navigation is the target audience. When you dig into the app permissions you are guaranteed to find that it will connect either to WiFi or BT. So even if the Mac is switched by OS, the app will authenticate at app level, because Joe wants it to so it can keep on ticking off his shopping list.
Gather up all your old smartphones and similar gadgets. Charge. Enable all comms. Fill pockets with gadgets. Waddle into store.
Their system believes that there's a crowd of 16 people wandering around the store, all together. Very suspiciously all in the same aisle.
It'd be fun to observe the reaction. Might 'flush out' the truth.
An interesting point raised there. Is there a maximum number of devices that could be carried without raising such concerns? If there is, what would it be? (Many people carry two phones (e.g. home and work), so the figure would have to be higher than that.) What factors could apply such that the number would vary - race, beard, skin-colour, nerdiness quotient ...?
This could be a fun game :-)
Wouldn't it be easier and less cluttered for stores to have a symbol to show where *no* mobile tracking is in operation? And educate the masses to assume they *are* likely being tracked otherwise.
BTW does putting my phone into Airplane mode offer sufficient protection (which I do anyway when visiting my GP or the cinema rather than turning it off altogether)?
You'd have to checkup AFAIK. Depends on OS and manufacture. Is it really an airplane mode? Can Apps override it? Does the OS override so as to check for updates etc?
Have you installed the app, and is it tracking offline via GPS and/or other means (though very rare and too hard to do outside of the spooks/University experiments).
"Can Apps override it? Does the OS override so as to check for updates etc?"
You think a standard app or the OS would override it and down the plane* just so it can check if there is any updates available?
"... is it tracking offline via GPS and/or other means (though very rare and too hard to do outside of the spooks/University experiments)."
Not hard at all, absolutely simple. I could put an app together to do that in about 15 minutes.
*yes, yes I know but those arguments aren't part of this post.
Everyone seems very negative about this, but thinking about it differently.....
Is it possible that the retailers might use info gathered to optimise their store layout. For example, if it shows that a lot of people keep going back and forth between different points, it could suggest that they could change the layout of items on shelves to make store navigation more efficient.
Also, doing things like putting your phone into Flight mode, meaning you could miss calls/txts, or suggesting things like ducking into notspots and changing your MAC address. Come on...does it really matter that much to you that IKEA know you spent a few seconds looking at a Billy bookcase?
"if it shows that a lot of people keep going back and forth between different points, it could suggest that they could change the layout of items on shelves to make store navigation more efficient"
You have it backwards. If it shows you nipping in for 2 things next to each other and leaving straight away, they will move them to opposite sides of the store so you pass, and are tempted by, more of their goodies. They want you to wander around having to read and look at things, not be in and out in a flash with just what you went in for.
It is used for improving layouts, but as the other poster said not to make your journey more efficient for you, but more lucrative for the store.
Big supermarkets have actual empty supermarkets stocked with no customers they test layouts on, supermarket margins on profit are actually quite narrow, (profit comes from high volume sales), so every edge is looked for and a lot of money is spent on tracking customer movements to work out the flow. They also use it to work out efficiency on when to do things like get cashiers on and when to take them off and get them stocking shelves, as well as of course collection of marketing data (depending on the system used - some are not as intrusive they just want to see how the crowd moves).
Same as crowd control for stadiums which some of these systems are also installed in, just usually there instead to work out safety aspects.
Don't forget the mandatory posts to Fabebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc etc about where you are, what you are doing and for 50+% of the population, what you are wearing.
Sometimes I'm surprised that these people actually have time to do anything else... like work, sleep or eat?
"Can you really not get along for those few minutes without receiving calls or text messages?"
I'd love to, but if my wife is with me, she will be running off in all sorts of directions like a terrier in a rabbit warren. The phone is vital to making sure we can find each other once I have gone straight to the thing we actually went shopping for (yes, I'm not a store's favourite kind of shopper). If she isn't with me, though, then I've trained her to realise that I hardly ever have the ringer turned on so it will be hit and miss if I get a message before I get I get home, so I could definitely turn the phone off!
They're negative about this for some very good reasons.
They aren't doing this for your benefit as a customer, they are doing it to milk as much out of you as they can. As Immenseness above rightly pointed out, this means they'll use the data to figure out how to make you spend more time in their store, not less.
Furthermore, this data is retained for an unknown period of time, possibly indefinitely. The more of it they collect, the more accurately they will be able to predict - and as a result, manipulate - peoples' behaviour. We all like to think we're not susceptible to psychological manipulation, but we're pitting ourselves against experts who have spent years of their lives studying how the mind works and how to get people to behave in certain ways. And they most certainly use this data to work this out.
Anyone who thinks they're immune to the kind of exploitation this makes possible are kidding themselves. Consider this: If they know who your friends are and can match you to a demographic, they can deploy the right sales clerk most likely to get the best results. Young, male, hetero and looking? You'll find yourself being served by a hot young chick wearing a short dress. Older, female and married? It'll be a genteel middle-aged guy in a suit covered in pheromones. Unmarried lesbian feminist? Meet the glasses-and-bob-cut saleswoman who shares your belief that women are underpaid. Single middle-aged geek? You'll get along fine with the jumper-wearing bloke who remembers all the old Monty Python skits.
Now I've had to use stereotypes here to illustrate my point. The retailers don't have to, because if you've let them into your online life, they already know all your likes, dislikes, interests and avoidances. Believe me, there's no depths to which the fuckers won't sink to screw an extra buck out of you. And it all becomes possible because of the highly personal analysis they do on all the data they collect.
Finally, I know all this sounds like a paranoid rant, because it suggests that people must spend all this time poring over your profile figuring out how to exploit you individually and personally. Obviously, they don't - nobody in a busy store has time for that shit, and they don't care about you or your cats. But the analytics and profiling software does all that gruntwork for them. It reduces you to a basic rundown so a floor manager can say to a clerk, "Mel, you take care of that guy." It's the appearance of taking a personal interest in you when in fact none really exists, that makes this entire process so repugnant.
It's not just a matter of having nothing to hide and nothing to fear. With the psychological and manipulative power the retailers can bring to bear on you, it's a matter of hiding everything you can or having your every weakness exploited to the hilt. You have everything to fear.
"They would just cut to the chase and offer the same matched advertising, but those giant popup adds instead."
Funny thing. Most retailers have those obnoxious LCD panels blathering all over the store, except when I'm alone in the aisle with one. Then they're usually a static display, or blank.
Since my phone's Bluetooth and WiFi are always off, I now have a reason why.
"They aren't doing this for your benefit as a customer, they are doing it to milk as much out of you as they can."
I once worked in sales many years ago. Fortunately it was only for a month then I found a proper job. But during that month it was drummed into us by managers at every opportunity that each area "owed" the company a certain income and it was our job to go out there and get it. Very little training or consideration was given for the quality of the product and why it would be good or useful to the customer.
Yes, it DOES sound like a protection racket. That is exactly how some of these people think.
They'll change the store layout to push what they THINK you want - or probaby what they think they can palm off on you. Remember, the sumbags are not doing this for your convenience. Its pretty much like what the numbskulls at Amazon do, showing you more stuff like what you have just bought, what friends bought (as if I give a shit) or what other people bought (as if I give a shit^2) and then emailing you the whole lot again. And again.
Marketing/advertising executives and their hapless droids should have their limbs and any other convenient appendages torn off one at a time.
Very slowly.
Fuckwits
With the added bonus that royalties would probably flow to New Line Cinema, another somewhat suspect outfit.
I would suggest that a large conspicuous logo be placed prominently outside these stores so that I can avoid the fuckers like the plague. It is getting to the stage where almost no aspect of life is untainted by the turds that push ads.
Contrary to the previous poster who said that everyone is susceptible to this crap, I tend to visit shops as and when I need something and for that I will either know exactly what I want or will have a close idea. I don't think I have ever walked into a shop and came out with something I did not set out to buy.
And if these ads pushed ono your device are as useful as the crap you get sent as spam from companies when you have bought something off them, they will be worse than pointless - the number of endless ''hurry !! special offer on our laptops' emails I get for weeks after buying a bloody laptop off them is beyond comprehension.
"I don't think I have ever walked into a shop and came out with something I did not set out to buy."
Obviously you don't do the food shopping, or at least have never done so while feeling a bit peckish. It's almost impossible to come out of a supermarket with only the items you need if you do it while hungry.
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