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Amazon Granted a Patent That Prevents In-Store Shoppers From Online Price Checking (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Amazon's long been a go-to for people to online price compare while shopping at brick-and-mortars. Now, a new patent granted to the company could prevent people from doing just that inside Amazon's own stores. The patent, titled "Physical Store Online Shopping Control," details a mechanism where a retailer can intercept network requests like URLs and search terms that happen on its in-store Wi-Fi, then act upon them in various ways. The document details in great length how a retailer like Amazon would use this information to its benefit. If, for example, the retailer sees you're trying to access a competitor's website to price check an item, it could compare the requested content to what's offered in-store and then send price comparison information or a coupon to your browser instead. Or it could suggest a complementary item, or even block content outright. Amazon's patent also lets the retailer know your physical whereabouts, saying, "the location may be triangulated utilizing information received from a multitude of wireless access points." The retailer can then use this information to try and upsell you on items in your immediate area or direct a sales representative to your location.
All that they will be able to tell with a TLS connection is what sites you are accessing, not URLs or contents. Most retailers use TLS (https) by default.
This is disturbing on so many levels.
How long until it's expanded to the neighbour's non-competing store? (It's their wi-fi, they can do what they want with it)
How long until it's expanded to the whole shopping mall? (It's their complimentary wi-fi, they can do what they want)
How long until it's expanded to your local ISP monopoly? (It's a customer-service that enhances stockholder value, if you don't like it you can always get another ISP)
This kind of abuse should be prohibited by net neutrality regulation, though somehow I don't think that's going to happen.
Perhaps that's what's needed for Joe Common to finally realize how ubiquitous tracking is and why he should care.
Then finally maybe there'll be a push towards everything going HTTPS and websites and apps finally putting some effort to protect the privacy of their users' traffic.
I have little hope that Joe Common will ever care about ubiquitous tracking. They may say they care, but they will not change their actions or habits. Most people just don't have the vision or understanding. However, I have noticed that more and more websites are going to HTTPS. It seems to have been prompted by Edward Snowden's revelations a few years ago; or at least seemed contemporaneous.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It's called "wire tapping"
This is a good point to raise. A patent gives you the "exclusive right to your invention", but the important word is "exclusive". In case people aren't aware, a patent does not give you the right to implement your patent, it only gives you the right to prevent others from implementing it (via monetary restitution or an injunction by a court). You can patent something that's illegal (e.g. a new method for manufacturing heroin), and you can sue anyone that infringes your patent, but you can still be arrested or sued for implementing it yourself.
Note that I'm not arguing whether or not Amazon's system counts as wire tapping, I'm only saying that it's not the USPTO's job to decide if it counts as wire tapping.
It seems that most of the online price checking takes place at OTHER stores, with customers checking the price of something on AMAZON. If Amazon thought to patent this method, maybe it's because they don't want competitors to block these online price checks.
It has nothing to do with being on the receiving end, as the theory (which doesn't even require capitalism as it comes from game theory and any planned economy that wants to even have a chance of working is going to strive for perfect information) applies to anyone participating in the game, which consumers are definitely doing.
In the real world, perfect information is practically impossible, and even when it is potentially available, it is frequently too expensive to justify the cost of acquiring it. Capitalism as typically practiced is a decentralized economic approach, which tends to work well in practice because no one is a mind reader, so the individual players tend to make economic moves that are more locally informed on average than planned economies could ever hope to achieve.
Are they patenting it so they can license it, or so they can prevent others from doing it by not licensing it?
I suspect they did this to lock it up so brick and mortar stores can't use it to prevent people from using it to check Amazon prices.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
With HTTPS this is impossible.
Unless you happen to have a root cert. I guess the question is how much do you trust Amazon Trust Services?
If you have visited a particular website before, and its key is pinned, the browser will know not to trust Amazon Trust Services for that site.