Shopping Centers Track Customers Via Cell Phone Signals

oschobero writes "According an article from the Times, customers in shopping centers are having their every move tracked. Using cellphone signals, the system can tell when people enter the center, how long they stay in a particular shop, and what route each customer takes. The system works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation." The particular tracking device described by the article is made by an English company called Path Intelligence.

Comments

Re:Turn off the phone?

[schnikies79]

No, if you turn it off, it's off.

At least on every phone I've owned.

It Does Run Linux!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Seriously, The Path Intelligence guys use, or at least got started using, the GNU Radio platform(which, incidentally, is really really cool and you ought to check out). http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/06/70933?currentPage=2 http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6124/1637/1600/path_intelligence.jpg http://handcircus.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-brother-in-wired.html

How does this work?

[imrtt]

This is pretty cool. The website claims accuracy of 1-2 meters. If they indeed use triangulation, their equipment has to be able to measure time down to ~1/300 millionth of a second. BTW, chances are that tracking is anonymous. I don't believe phones transmit phone numbers or other private information unencrypted.

Since this article is about cell phone tracking, I thought I would mention a free GPS tracking service that we recently launched. It's called InstaMapper. There is a DIY that explains how to track a car in real-time using a $40 prepaid cell phone:

http://www.instamapper.com/diytracking.html

yes there are

[Anonymous Coward]

Under Section 5(1)(b) of the WT Act 1949 it is an offence if a person "otherwise than under the authority of a designated person, either:(i) uses any wireless telegraphy apparatus with intent to obtain information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any message whether sent by means of wireless telegraphy or not, of which neither the person using the apparatus nor a person on whose behalf he is acting is an intended recipient;


This means that it is illegal to listen to anything other than general reception transmissions unless you are either a licensed user of the frequencies in question or have been specifically authorized to do so by a designated person. A designated person means:

                        the Secretary of State;

                        the Commissioners of Customs and Excise; or

                        any other person designated for the purpose by regulations made by the Secretary of State.

Or:

(ii) except in the course of legal proceedings or for the purpose of any report thereof, discloses any information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any such message, being information which would not have come to his knowledge but for the use of wireless telegraphy apparatus by him or by another person."

  This means that it is also illegal to tell a third party what you have heard.

With certain exceptions, it is an offence under Section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 for a person - "intentionally and without lawful authority to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its transmission by means of:

                        a public postal service; or
                        a public telecommunication system."

It is similarly an offence to intercept any communication in the course of its transmission by means of a private telecommunication system.

According to Ofcom, scanners and monitoring radios can be legally sold, bought and used in the United Kingdom, without the need to obtain a license, provided they only receive radio services meant for general reception by the public. In the UK such services include Citizens' Band, Amateur, licensed broadcast radio, weather and navigation broadcasts.

It is only illegal to use scanners to listen to licensed private services such as the police and taxi radio transmissions and other prohibited or private broadcasts not intended for the public. Listening in on such broadcasts is an offence under Section 5(1) (b) of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949.

In order to help the public understand what it can and cannot listen to, Ofcom publishes a Radio Authority information sheet titled RA-169.

Anyone who intends to listen to radio transmissions should be aware of the following, it warns: A license is not required for a radio receiver as long as it is not capable of transmission according to The Wireless Telegraphy Apparatus (Receivers) (Exemption) Regulations 1989 (SI 1989 No 123). An exception to this is that it is an offense to listen to unlicensed broadcasters (pirate broadcasts) without a license and licenses are not issued for that purpose.

Although it is not illegal to sell, buy or own a scanning or other receiver in the UK, it must only be used to listen to transmissions meant for general reception - Amateur and Citizens' Band transmissions, licensed broadcast radio and weather and navigation broadcasts. It is an offence to use your scanner to listen to any other radio services unless you are authorized by a designated person to do so.

So possession of the equipment is allowed so long as it is not used to listen to prohibited communications in the UK.

http://www.monitoringtimes.com/html/mtlaws_may04.html

Re:yes there are

[SoopahMan]

I'm not a lawyer and I suspect you aren't either, but the important part of the law here is this:

"intent to obtain information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any message"

If all they're doing is watching cellphones walk by and notice that there's a signal moving along this vector, triggering antennae bit by bit as they pass, and another moving along another vector, then they're certainly steering clear of this law.

But if they're reading the contents of the signal, they're probably violating it. How they read them will matter, and since the word "intent" is there, that's gonna get complicated. They might be able to argue they aren't trying to identify the user (the Sender), just monitor a cellphone's travels for the purpose of tracking its position over time. The cellphone is a device rather than a person, so that might avoid the definition of "sender" if they manage to show a sender is the human holding the phone.

And they might be able to play other tricks to avoid it all. For example they might be using irregularities in the way each cell broadcasts to uniquely identify each one, without any reading of the contents at all. If that's how they do it they're much more likely to dodge this or at least confuse a judge or jury so thoroughly that they get away with it.

Re:Turn off the phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if you turn it off, it's off.

At least on every phone I've owned. Maybe you should watch this news clip

Re:What about the shopping centers with a poor sig

[maxwell demon]

They will track you the best, because when the signal quality gets worse, your phone increases its own signal strength in order to keep the connection as long as possible.

Re:Unauthorized signal reception

[maxwell demon]

Simple example: If you monitor the ways where people go, you'll know the places where most people pass, and will put those things you want them to buy on those places.

Re:Walk randomly.

[Sentry21]

You can also enable 'airplane mode' on most phones, which turns off the radio but leaves the phone otherwise functional. Some phones behave oddly when you do this though; my RIZR's clock tends to skew by a few hours a day when I leave it on airplane mode (while I was in the hospital). Screwed with my sense of time for a while until I figured it out.

Re:warning sigs at doors

[Yocto Yotta]

IMEIs are serial numbers that the networks use to make sure your calls go to your phone . . . unless you want to carry around a useless radio emitting brick for absolutely no reason BUT to fuck with the company, changing IMEIs would be a bad idea. There's a lot of work that's gone into preventing that from happening, the fraud possibilities would be endless if the serial number of a handset could be easily changed. I'm not saying the can't be changed, there's a huge grey market around that very practice, but definitely not something trivial that can be done by consumers.

Re:Unauthorized signal reception

[mikael]

They intercept the IMEI number of the cell phone; the serial number of the hardware, not your personal telephone number. You could change the telephone number simply by unlocking the phone and inserting a new SIM card. But the IMEI never changes unless you got a new phone.

Like cable broadband networks, the actual data transferred for calls is encrypted, but the IMEI is not.

Re:Who are they fooling?

[mikael]

With most shops, they try and arrange the floor sections so that people walk through as many areas as possible. The most popular areas will be at the most inaccessible corner - Bookstores tend to have the expensive educational titles at the very back, while they have the cheap paperbacks at the front of the store.

DIY stores (like IKEA) try and arrange all the sections so that you have to walk through every section (think Koch curve) to get from the main door to the item you want to buy to the checkout desk and the exit.

Supermarkets tend to have the flowers/fruit/newspapers/magazines seem to be next to the entrance, the bakery is way back near the opposite side/end of the store, and the liquor/beer/wine is in another corner, with the frozen food section somewhere in the middle. In that way, they get everyone to wander all through the aisles, rather than just walking in and out.

Re:Pure BS!

[robo_mojo]

As a fun experiment, try placing your cellphone (turned on) next to an audio receiver, or television, or any other device that is susceptible to radio interference.

What you'll soon see is that the phone is causing interference (through transmissions) intermittently. For example, every few minutes you will hear slight buzzing from the speakers of your radio or television (and if it is a television you might see the picture go wavy, too).

This is a well-known phenomenon, so saying that phones do not broadcast when they are not in use is an error.

However, I'm not sure how this could be used for accurate tracking, since the broadcasts are only intermittent. You could go halfway across the store between broadcasts, which would make it a bit difficult to show your route I'd guess.

Re:you need to read the other comments here

[Sancho]

The guy didn't have the radio off--the phone was just in sleep mode, where it still polls for e-mail (if you have it set up to do that.)

The Slashdot article linked to http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/09/10/att-is-cruising-for-a-bruising explains it all.

Re:it's not unnecessary

[Sandbags]

OK, first, if the iPhone is off, or in airline mode, it is OFF. The FCC and ther FAA mandates that the device neither send, receive, nor interfere with signals when in either mode. Besides, iff off meant it could still be tracked, then if you turned if off, the battery would still drain at a predictable rate, dumbass, it does not.

Re:you need to read the other comments here

[yabos]

There is the airplane mode in the iPhone which shuts off all radios.

hehehe

[ClioCJS]

Good luck finding a local d.a. willing to indict a cop for "doing his job". Might I recommend RSS-subscribing to BadCopNews.net for a few months? It'll wake you up to the way things work.

Re:it's not unnecessary

[swillden]

From what I can tell there is some possibility that some phones might be able to be turned on remotely.

Cite? Because that's BS.

If your phone can be turned on by a radio signal, that means that the RF receiver and amplifier have to be powered up in order to receive the signal, and some processor has to be powered up in order to analyze the incoming signals and determine if the "power up" signal has been received. The technical term for a phone in such a state is "ON".

Just because something is off doesn't mean it is off completely. In fact if you turn off everything in your house, you'll find that you're still consuming considerable electricity from most everything in the house.

Yes, many household electronic devices have a "soft off" mode. Battery-powered devices work differently, because it's a bad thing for a battery-powered device to continually draw down its battery while turned off. Actually powering up the RF equipment in the phone would drain it just as fast as if the phone were on but not being used for talking.

If you have a cell phone that has an alarm that can power up the phone at the preset time then your phone isn't really off.

Not true.

Many small CPUs, like the ones used in phones, have a timer circuit that stays active, drawing a miniscule current -- one that the battery could supply for decades. When the phone is off, that circuit is the only thing active and drawing power. The phone IS off, the RF transciever is off, the CPU is off, any DRAM is off and not being refreshed, the display is off, the keypad is off -- the fact that one tiny circuit in the CPU is running a timing loop and will trigger a relay to power the phone up at a preset time does not mean that the phone is on.

If you have a Nextel phone, it may have two way radio features.

Only when it's turned on.

If you have a phone that does more than than just make calls and save phone numbers, has GPS locater in it, etc. then your phone may not shutdown completely off.

Nearly all phones these days have a GPS reciever in them, but not only are the GPS units not powered up when the phone is off, they generally aren't even powered up when the phone is on, because a GPSr sucks way too much juice and would kill your battery in no time. Normally, the GPSr only powers up during a 911 call, except in phones that give the user access to the GPS data, and then the GPSr turns on whenever the user turns it on.

My phone [...] doesn't have a GPS locater.

Are you sure about that? I believe that all phones made within the last three or four years are required to have a GPS receiver in them, for emergency use.

I don't see how these malls can track every cellphone user.

Oh, I can. I actually worked on a project for Sprint to enable tracking of employer-issued phones as a service, so that companies can track their delivery drivers, etc., while on their routes without adding additional equipment to the trucks.

That project only used tower triangulation for most phones (since the GPS receivers in them are usually off), and was still able to locate the phones to within 100 yards. I can easily see how putting antennas at strategic locations in the mall (kind of like passive picocells) would make it possible to localize every powered-on phone in the property to within inches. Phones don't transmit continuously when not in use, so they would only get a position update every 10-30 seconds, but that's more than enough to follow customers' movements with a high degree of accuracy. When someone is talking on their phone, of course, then you'd get continuous coverage.

Hmmm... might be useful. For malls that contain movie theaters, rather than trying to block cell signals in the theaters, maybe they should just notify theater management whenever someone answers a call. Someone could be sent in to escort the offending patron out. Might get false alarms from iphones and blackberries, though; downloading e-mail.