Slashdot Mirror
Have a Wi-Fi-Enabled Phone? Stores Are Tracking You
jfruh writes "Call it Google Analytics for physical storefronts: if you've got a phone with wi-fi, stores can detect your MAC address and track your comings and goings, determining which aisles you go to and whether you're a repeat customer. The creator of one of the most popular tracking software packages says that the addresses are hashed and not personally identifiable, but it might make you think twice about leaving your phone on when you head to the mall."
To turn off the wifi
Of course marketing guys are going to be more creative in tracking you. I automatically turn off my WiFi when I hit the road. I use a car dock with my Droid, and I use a simple app that detects when I put it in the car dock. It will turn off WiFi, and turn on Bluetooth. When I remove it from the car dock, I could either restore the previous WiFi setting, or leave it off. I generally leave it off unless I'm going somewhere I trust the WiFi, like home or the office.
Android has a nifty little program called Llama that I use for pretty much the same thing. Get home, WiFi on, leave the house, WiFi off. The tool has other benefits too, like going into silent mode when home at night so random emails don't wake me. But thanks to Llama, I usually don't have to mess with my WiFi settings unless I'm in a strange place that I know has free WiFi and I want to leech off of it instead of my data connection.
Actually, you don't even need to turn off wifi. Just set your phone to not automatically join any public wifi. Wireless clients, including the phone, compiles a list of access points you can join using the ESSID broadcast from the access point. In other words, the access points just dumbly advertise their presence and don't know who are looking until your device tries to join.
I once had a signature.