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.

Comments

Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[GameboyRMH]

Not only will they track you and spy on you. but now they'll also censor your browsing.

At least they're not just silently modifying the traffic to mislead you...yet...

Now what's that theory about all participants in capitalism requiring perfect information about the market?

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[__aaclcg7560]

Consumers are on the receiving end of capitalism. They're not capitalists. What more perfect information can you get than a capative audience on your in-store wifi network?

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[kilfarsnar]

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.

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[TWX]

Perhaps, given that Amazon has like, two retail locations, the point of this is to prevent other sellers like, oh, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, etc, from being able to block retail customers from searching for Amazon pricing on items they find in-store?

'cause it seems to me that if a seller doesn't really have a brick-and-mortar presence, that this patent doesn't help them actively.

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[spikesahead]

Why would I EVER connect to in-store wifi? Even if they manage to change the law enough to let them turn the store into a faraday cage, I can still GO OUTSIDE and find out anything I want.

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[ukandystreet]

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?

Re:Yet another reason to never use in-store wifi

[dkone]

Why would you ever 'jump on' wifi in a store? Even if my wifi is turned on, I have to manually connect to any new networks. My experience this dates back to Best Buy and their in-store price lookup kiosks. Not sure if they still have them, but a few years back I had looked up the price of something at home saw it was in stock at the local Best Buy. Went there to purchase but the price was something like 100 dollars more. I asked the associate what was up, told him I just verified the price on the their website was less. He takes me to one of the pricing kiosks, looks up the part and shows me it matches the in-store price. Since this was before I had a smart phone (like I said it was years ago), I ran home looked up the price again, printed it out, went back to the store and got the item for that price. Turns out the in-store kiosks either pointed to an intranet mirror of the public site or had different pricing. Bottom line is don't trust the wolf when he says he isn't going to eat you.

So the question is this:

[mark_reh]

Are they patenting it so they can license it, or so they can prevent others from doing it by not licensing it?

Re:So the question is this:

[JaredOfEuropa]

The real question is how this is even worthy of a patent.

Re:So the question is this:

[e3m4n]

or license it to brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy, etc. If the licensing is enough to cover the margins Amazon gets for hosting a product, not only do they still make the profit margins they were expecting, but they dont have to expend labor and shipping in the process. It would be a legal, and unique, twist on the old mob shakedown 'fire insurance' scenario. Buy my amazon-blocking app and you'll never worry about lost sales from us.

Re:So the question is this:

[EvilSS]

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.

How will this work with TLS?

[Chrisq]

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.

Nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "wire tapping"

Re:Nothing to see here

[Dragonslicer]

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.

Don't use store WiFi

[religionofpeas]

Cool plan, but I never use store WiFi. It's too much of a hassle to sign in, and it's often slow, and when you walk away, it interrupts any open connections. Instead, I just keep 4G mobile data on all the time.

In store Wi-Fi? Seriously?

[sjbe]

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.

WTF would anyone use in-store Wi-Fi in a retail store? I have trouble even imagining a meaningful benefit to this. I don't even use "free" Wi-Fi at places like the airport outside of an emergency. Cellular network connections are generally faster, more secure, more private, and less hassle.

Who uses random wifi?

[Pedestrianwolf]

I am the only one that doesn't connect to an access point that I'm not familiar with?

Maybe the purpose of the patent is to bury it

[dcavanaugh]

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.

Re:can they do it with https?

[funkman]

That's not how TLS works. At most you expose the hostname you connect to. All path parameters in the GET request are encrypted. And it doesnt matter if GET/POST/PUT.

Re:This might be defensive (Just like 1-Click)

[cozytom]

Again why does anyone buy anything from Amazon. They are an evil evil evil company. They don't make anything better, only more expensive (long term).

Most likely this patent was asked for by Amazon so they *STOP* retailers from doing this. If a retailer does this, then Amazon can ask the store for all their profits since the beginning of time. Amazon hope customers will do this so they will find it cheaper through the amazon store.

Please people, stop giving Amazon any money, don't buy from these creeps.

Passive participle in headline

[tepples]

Amazon is not supposed to be able to grant patents. Only the USPTO does that in the USA.

You'd have a point if the headline began "Amazon Grants a Patent". But the use of the form "Granted" is a clue that Amazon is not the agent. To fit a headline under a publication's size limits, headline writers often follow rules like the following:

1. A headline is usually in the present tense: "USPTO Grants Patent to Amazon".
2. When the agent is obvious, such as only USPTO that ever grants patents, the sentence is flipped to passive voice: "Amazon Is Granted a Patent".
3. It's common to drop "is" and "are" from a passive main clause: "Amazon Granted a Patent".

Tendency 1 lets readers tell the difference between a passive main clause and an active one because only the passive one will have a passive participle. Most English verbs have a passive participle spelled the same as the past tense, but very few verbs (such as "come" and "run") have a passive participle identical to the present tense. Thus in this context, "Amazon Granted a Patent" means "Amazon [was] granted a patent [by the USPTO]".

Ambiguous grammar

[Comboman]

For the sake of brevity, headlines don't follow standard grammar rules, which creates ambiguity in this case. The headline could mean "Amazon [was] granted a patent" or it could also mean "Amazon granted a patent [to someone else]". The unambiguous way to state it in 4 words is "Patent granted to Amazon" which can only mean "[A] patent [was] granted to Amazon".

Key pinning

[tepples]

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.