I wonder if there could be an interesting ML classifier using information like this. Crawl a customers social media, track their behavior in the restaurant. Surely some interesting patterns will emerge.
What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
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Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
No need to provide Internet, as most phones broadcast their WiFi MAC addresses to the world, even with the WiFi UI shown as "off".
Recent Android and iOS versions randomize the MAC when scanning.
Not even “recent”, I believe this happened a long time ago
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#13Right now, it's high-end restaurants in New York City doing this. But they did that by hand in the past. The "headwaiter who knows everybody" was a big deal once. The big change will come when this filters down to chain restaurants. Which way will Starbucks go on this? They already have an affinity card and know your WiFi information. "You haven't visited a Starbucks in 72 hours. Are you OK?"
What are examples of some restaurants in New York City that do this, I’d like to try this next time I’m there.
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
No need to provide Internet, as most phones broadcast their WiFi MAC addresses to the world, even with the WiFi UI shown as "off".
Recent Android and iOS versions randomize the MAC when scanning.
True, but in Android's case, the implementation seems to be flawed:
In our lab environment we observed that in addition to periodic global MAC addressed probe requests, we were able to force the transmission of additional such probes for all Android devices. First, anytime the user simply turned on the screen, a set of global probe requests were transmitted. An active user, in effect, renders randomization moot, eliminating the privacy countermeasure all together.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/shiel...
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#15This is nothing. A Pizza shop in Oslo was busted back in May for using Facial recognition software on it's customers: > A crashed advertisement reveals the code of the facial recognition system used by a pizza shop in Oslo... Source: https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000
why is this illegal?
I don't think it is. I might have missed it but I don't think anyone in the thread or tweet suggested it was.
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#16Be sue to read though to the last paragraph, where the story becomes a bit darker (though not unexpected to HN readers):
They’ve read your biography . . .
“We have had guests come in and we’ve read their biography and read maybe they had a really rough last year or maybe they lost someone in their life recently,” Meyer says. “That may sound extreme, but all of those pieces of information are going to help us do a better job of customizing the hug when they come in. ..."
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#17This article sounds pretty extreme. "They've read your biography" to personalize your dining experience? I think very, very few places would bother with something like that. Maybe if you are such a regular that you know all the people there by name, or if you go to a very expensive restaurant where cost is not an issue.
This is an important point that the title elides: there's still a good amount of manual work required here which means that it's only really worth the effort for fine dining. As the article mentions, they already did things like this with index cards in the past.
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#18This is nothing. A Pizza shop in Oslo was busted back in May for using Facial recognition software on it's customers: > A crashed advertisement reveals the code of the facial recognition system used by a pizza shop in Oslo... Source: https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000
why is this illegal?
It might not be, although privacy laws in the EU tend to be stricter than those in the US. "Busted" could simply refer to this practice being outed to customers who might not like it.
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#19Right now, it's high-end restaurants in New York City doing this. But they did that by hand in the past. The "headwaiter who knows everybody" was a big deal once. The big change will come when this filters down to chain restaurants. Which way will Starbucks go on this? They already have an affinity card and know your WiFi information. "You haven't visited a Starbucks in 72 hours. Are you OK?"
Starbucks has been pushing gameified star bonuses and events from my understanding. It effectively does "Hey would you like some stars" on everyones phone. Also they give bonuses and stars for food you don't eat to encourage you to try the other food.
Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
#20This article sounds pretty extreme. "They've read your biography" to personalize your dining experience? I think very, very few places would bother with something like that. Maybe if you are such a regular that you know all the people there by name, or if you go to a very expensive restaurant where cost is not an issue.
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