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."

Comments

first

[Anonymous Coward]

To turn off the wifi

Turn off wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Most smart phones allow you to turn off wifi.
I keep mine off most of the time unless I need it that also includes GPS and Bluetolth

Re:Turn off wifi

[Spiridios]

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.

Change your MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Here's what's really scary...

[neiras]

Any smartphone can see all the MAC addresses of all phones and access points around it, bluetooth or WiFi (if enabled of course). With GPS positioning on most of those devices and a Giant Corporate Big Brother aggregating the results, all of us are reporting on our proximity to each other.

We all know that Google's wifi geolocation stuff works this way - by tracking which fixed wifi base stations are in range and correlating with a GPS fix. People forget that Google can also identify other phones within range of your phone, and they know which Google accounts are attached to those devices.

Google really does know who is sitting next to you on the train or in the coffee shop, who your jogging partner is, and which whore you visit when your wife leaves your general vicinity.

I bet they do some amazing automated profiling. This guy is a garbage man and works with these people, that guy likes to sit in coffee shops and this woman is usually also present, she's not his wife, so lets advertise couples vacations and cheater sites, this other woman visits a preschool every day and is probably a parent, let's suggest other parents from the same preschool as her Google+ friend...

I Smell a DOS prank

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

Re:Why does this matter?

[calzones]

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.

just don't automatically join public wifi

[pikine]

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.