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."
Change your MAC address to a pseudo-random one every time you go out of your main home or work environment. It's possible on android and iOS devices.
No, that's not what it means at all. It means they'll be able to better tailor their store to profit off of you. Generally, that's not a good thing for you.
That is worth repeating. All of this "personalization" stuff is not about making your shopping experience better, it is about maximizing the amount of money you spend. Any benefit to you is purely incidental.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Presumably they are looking for the initial broadcast packet that starts the handshake to establish a wifi connection with a base station. Seems like you could mess with these guys if your phone had an app to dynamically change the MAC address on every handshake, you could also speed up the rate of such handshake initiations. Wander the aisles for a half hour and the store's now got a million bogus entries in their tracking database.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The trouble starts when all mac address's activity gets logged into big data and stays there.
Then later on, your mac address gets cross-referenced with your real name and phone number and personally identifying data some day (because, for example, you may frequent Starbucks or locations that feature free wifi).
Suddenly, without anyone really trying, your every movement throughout the day just became trackable and they know how to reach you.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Not that it matters, but it doesn't work that way... (My full time job involved researching proximity algorithms)... Using Wifi as proximity, you can tell that say these 5 particular people are in a room, but you have zero idea the spatial relation of each of these 5 people to each other, without the aid of other sensors. Wifi or bluetooth will not give you spatial relationships in any meaningful manner.
For example, if my signal strength to the AP is 80%, and your's is 80%, that does not mean we are next to each other. We can be on opposite sides of the AP, or we can be at some other arbitrary location, where each of us has a different obstacle blocking the direct line of site to the AP, reducing the signal strength by differing amounts. Plus we have no idea what the transmit power is on each device.
You may be able to get a reasonable guesstimate of proximity to the AP, but not spatial orientation to the AP. (ie, you are within 20 ft of the AP, but you don't know in which direction), and certainly not between each peer. The phone will not be able to give you proximity information to another phone using wifi, because the stock chipset on Android and iOS does not give you access to read these beacon packets from arbitrary un-connected devices. I've been able to get it to work in the lab, but only when I use specific hardware/chipsets, with special drivers/firmware.
So all I'm saying is that people are making this to be a bigger deal than it is.