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Facebook Will Track What Physical Stores You Go Into (popsci.com)

Posted by msmash on from the our-big-brother-Facebook dept.

Facebook will soon roll out a feature that will allow advertisers to see which brick and mortar stores you've physically walked into. These details are collected from anyone who has the location services feature turned on, Facebook says. The will allow advertisers to see in real time which Facebook ads are turning into actual sales. Popular Science reports: Using the location services on your phone, Facebook will keep a tally of who goes to what stores, and show the anonymized numbers to advertisers, as evidence that buying ads on Facebook is getting people to visit brick-and-mortar businesses. It's a great thing for Facebook, which will now have excellent data to prove (or disprove) on a user-to-user basis what a store is getting for its advertising dollar. But it's a pretty frightening idea that a company will have information not unlike your credit card statement all from location services data.

7 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Yep, you volunteered for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Turns out all you needed to do to get people to voluntarily wear a GPS tracker is tell them it makes talking to their friends easier.

  2. Reasons by theurge14 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yet another reason to keep Location Services off other than it drains my phone battery.

    1. Re:Reasons by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

      turn off Wifi as well. It can see what wifi AP's are available and use that data

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Fuck you Facebook. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fuck you Facebook.

  4. No, they won't. by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I consider myself a borderline-tinfoil-hat privacy advocate, and I really see this as a non-issue.

    If you voluntarily install a tracking application on your phone, and give it permission to access your GPS - That doesn't "violate" anything (except "common sense").

    Yes, I would consider anyone allowing this a complete idiot; but in no way does this affect anyone that doesn't want it to track them.

  5. Re:Or make it critical for social networking by tripleevenfall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aside from a few Sheldon Coopers out there who would be shut-ins without social media, most people do not want to be tracked by GPS by a company which exists to sell information about them to advertisers.

    This is it for me and the FB mobile app, I have just deleted it and will not be reinstalling it.

  6. Re:Or make it critical for social networking by tripleevenfall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, the point of loyalty cards is to get me to consolidate all my buying with that retailer instead of with a variety of retailers.