Pay-For-Visit Advertising

theodp writes "US patent office documents released Thursday show that a startup named Pelago is seeking a patent covering Pay-For-Visit Advertising, which uses GPS, Bluetooth, or RFID on your mobile devices to track your travels to see if you wander into a place of business that appeared in an ad shown earlier on your cellphone, PDA, or laptop. To maximize ad revenue, phone calls are also tracked to see if you dial a number associated with an ad, and financial transactions are examined to see if you make a purchase from an advertiser. The application goes on to note that the system may be of interest to government agencies. Pelago just raised $7.4M from the likes of KPCB and Jeff Bezos."

Comments

Re:no thanks

[jellomizer]

Oh and you shouldn't use a credit, debit card or checks for any of your transactions, forget about Buying stuff online or mail order.

Back in them olden days when we went to the corner store Bob behind the counter knew what your spending habbits were and gave you options on what was new and good, and if Bob was a bit chatty half the town would know your spending habbits. We acuatlly have far more privacy per day. You are being tacked as a number and that number is rairly connected to you personally. So the whole town doesn't know your spending habbits just some guys from xyz knows that 9384123223 likes to buy keyboards, or is in a market for keyboards. Don't expect the governement to get it right if they cant realize when you put in a change of address for a new license and they will not send you notices that your registration is out of date to the new address I doubt they can figure anything else about you.