Malls Track Shoppers' Cell Phones On Black Friday

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."

Comments

Opt out

[Elgonn]

"Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones."
I guess by that metric people who don't go there are also opting out.

Re:opt out

[Anonymous Coward]

I can "opt out" by telling the retails to go fuck themselves.

In fact, I think I'll call a few of them right now and tell them why they just lost customers. I can "opt out" by taking my business elsewhere.

opt out

[nitehawk214]

>Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.

I can opt out of billboards by not driving and staying at home. I can opt out of spam by not having an email account.

opt out, I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

Re:enhance your shopping experience?

[geekoid]

But the way they uses this information to get money is by offering things people want.

Dude, they don't use it to grab money out of your wallet.
They don't care about YOU. they care about the patterns of movement in the mall.
Benefits to you:
A) Better mall layout
B) better crowd control
C) Accurate information on shopping habits
D) more stuff more people want.

Re:Jammers?

[Penguinisto]

Jammer? Hell, I was curious to see what would happen if I swapped out the SIM card from the phone every time I walk into a different store, or perhaps at random? Gather the whole family's pile o' SIMs, and maybe a couple of expired ones (they still work for emergency calls, so odds are good their signal will pick up).

I figure if enough folks did that in one mall (say, 100-200 people?), the algorithms would show enough crap data to basically have the management demanding their money back from the company that sold it to 'em.

Even better... I wonder what would happen if you and enough cohorts went to the mall, selected some bits to buy at different stores, walked up to the counter, and proclaimed to the cashier that "this is what I would have bought if your mall wasn't so invasive of my privacy by tracking my cell signal", then walk out, leaving the goods on the counter unpaid-for.