Clear Channel Plans To Roll Out Digital Billboards

Tree131 writes "Just in case you don't have enough distractions driving on the highway, Clear Channel is planning to roll out digital billboards. The new billboards will feature ads that depend on the time of day as well as the general area demographics. I wonder how long before someone with lots of time on their hands hacks into the system and starts tampering with the messages."

Comments

Ads

[thefiremonk]

Will they have X-rated ads at 2 am?

Lawyers

[noelo]

Are going to love this. Imagine the number of court cases which will litigate agains CC when they claim that the driver was distracted by the billboards. I wonder how this will relate to the laws which are being considered for banning in-car dvd players....

Re:Lawyers

[33degrees]

Of course lawyers are going to live this; chances are, at least half the ads are going to be FOR lawyers:

"Hello, have you just gotten into an accident while looking at this billboard? If so, then call us, at..."

The other half of the adds will be for insurance companies.

Re:Nothing new?

[Dj Stingray]

Wow, after reading my post, I just realized how badder my grammer is then most people.

everytime I drive by it....

[Dj Stingray]

Everytime I drive by it, it displays a beer ad. How did they know??? RFID chips in bottles? WOW! Technology!

Re:everytime I drive by it....

[kd5ujz]

Your not constantly listening to country by any chance are you?

The OS

[Paladin144]

Hopefully it will be running on Windows Me. That way, most of the time we won't be distracted by the blue screens (of death). The color might even be soothing.

Windows Error messages

[Gary Destruction]

I saw a site that had pictures of digital billboards with Windows Error messages on them. This is the picture I saw, although I can't remember the original site. It's not a crash but apparently, someone's missing a driver disk.

This is Funny

[Bruha]

My dad's a truck driver and keeps a laptop with a 1xRTT card in but also uses his WiFi card when at truck stops. When he was drivng through Utah he kept picking up a SSID and since I setup his wifi equipment he calls me asking what the hell is this SSID he kept picking up and goofing his connections whenever he stoped somewhere to access the net.

Turns out it was a billboard company in Salt Lake who after I contacted them really didnt care that they're systems were out there broadcasting their SSID's and assigning people's laptops a friggin IP!!

I'm curious if someone's managed to redesign a few billboards out there.

Re: This is Funny

[Black Parrot]

> > I'm curious if someone's managed to redesign a few billboards out there.

> A far more interesting hack would be to 'Own' the billboard and

...use them to DDoS ClearChannel.

Re:Too many temptations

[Technician]

If they use a regular FM broadcast (why pay a paging company) and it's subchannel to send the information to the billboard, then the protocol would be sniffable. The trick would be swamping the input on the billboard to get your signal into it. You would have to be pretty close to do it since you are competing with a 50KW station most of the time.

For more information on subchannels, Google SCA subchannel.

Re:Nothing new?

[gefafwysp]

We've had these in Britain by the motorways for ages, but they always seem to be advertising something called "Major delays on M6 at J15".

Your written correspondence is currently broadcasting a postal address. With this, someone can begin attacking your house!