Slashdot Mirror
How Target's Mobile App Uses Location Tech To Track You
An anonymous reader writes Big-box retailers are figuring out how to use mobile apps to drive in-store sales, but they're also concerned about privacy. To see how they're doing, Xconomy took Target's app for a spin on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The app uses indoor location-mapping technology from a startup called Point Inside. The verdict? The app saved a few minutes in locating items around the store, but it would work better if it knew where shoppers (and the items on their lists) are at any time. With Apple's iBeacons set to roll out more widely, retail privacy will be a hot issue in 2015.
What matters is not if an app can tell where you are in the store, but if and when the app shares that information with a server. I don't care what information an application collects, if the data stays in-app.
Of course the great likelihood is that an app that collects that information will probably send that to a server, at the very least to query for specifics around you... but a smart app developer could provide a privacy option for users while still gaining benefit from iBeacons and the like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley