Malls Track Shoppers' Cell Phones On Black Friday

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 23, 2011 @09:05AM from the unseen-mechanized-eye dept.

antdude writes in with a story about two U.S. malls that plan on tracking shoppers' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones this Friday. "The management company of both malls, Forest City Commercial Management, says personal data is not being tracked. 'We won't be looking at singular shoppers,' said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. 'The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to.' Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones."

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This was covered in /. in 2008... by dkegel · 2011-11-23 09:24 · Score: 5, Informative

See http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/05/18/1838222/shopping-centers-track-customers-via-cell-phone-signals
Re:opt out by Stormthirst · 2011-11-23 09:57 · Score: 4, Informative

Except Amazon's shit at it. They keep on trying to sell me stuff I've already bought from them. It's rare for me to want to buy the same DVD twice, despite what the MPAA wants (ie one copy of a DVD per person watching the movie)