A provocative thought experiment: are you more annoyed by retailers recommending a product you just purchased from them, or a retailer recommending a product you probably will need soon? In a world blanketed by advertising, I would rather see relevant advertisements than be bombarded by garbage. Maybe I will get a deal, maybe I will discover something I like, maybe I will ignore it... but the spray-and-pray untargeted advertising that tries to advertise arthritis medication to me as a 31-year-old man is guaranteed only to annoy.
Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
11–20 of 257 posts
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#12am I understanding this mechanism right?
1. Set up a bluetooth beacon in the diary aisle that broadcasts as a connectable (nor not?) device with an "SSID" (or the bluetooth equivelant) that is a known GUID
2. apps on your phone can scan for available bluetooth devices, and see the presence of the GUID, which is enough for them to know you are in the dairy aisle of Store 1234.
if that's right, does this mean disabling bluetooth, or restricting a device's access to scan for devices, will preclude this?
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#13So... turn off Bluetooth and Wifi when you go into a store? Put subtle lines on your face with makeup to confuse their facial recognition systems? What else do we need to do now to go out in public?
What you need is something similar to EU-GDPR! This would be illegal on so many levels in Europe.
fyi BLE tracking is both completely legal and has wide spread usage all across the EU. there’s hundreds of EU-based companies that provide these kinds of services.
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#14I didn't know it was a secret? Figured it was pretty common knowledge back when iBeacons and similar were announced and when major retailers like Target even made press releases about it https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/20/target-rolls-out-bluetooth... Kind of funny that Apple pushing privacy basically helped create this kind of tracking to begin with. Edit: NYT article mentions other apps selling data to retailers. I…
Apple? Maybe it's the big stores and advertisers want to know everything about everybody that are to blame?
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#15A provocative thought experiment: are you more annoyed by retailers recommending a product you just purchased from them, or a retailer recommending a product you probably will need soon? In a world blanketed by advertising, I would rather see relevant advertisements than be bombarded by garbage. Maybe I will get a deal, maybe I will discover something I like, maybe I will ignore it... but the spray-and-pray untargete…
In isolation, I'd prefer the better targeted advertising.
In reality, I'm not comfortable with the amount of privacy violation getting that targeted ad requires.
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#16am I understanding this mechanism right? 1. Set up a bluetooth beacon in the diary aisle that broadcasts as a connectable (nor not?) device with an "SSID" (or the bluetooth equivelant) that is a known GUID 2. apps on your phone can scan for available bluetooth devices, and see the presence of the GUID, which is enough for them to know you are in the dairy aisle of Store 1234. if that's right, does this mean disabling…
Basically it means those loyalty apps stores put out? Are you sure you know what that app is doing...?
You are right that disabling bluetooth or being aware of what apps your phone has is what is required.
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#17Honestly, part of this doesn't bother me that much. It doesn't bother me for a store to know where I'm standing while I'm in their store.
What does bother me is the part where they can get lots of other data and use it to build a profile of me that spans far beyond their store. The fact that this Pulsate company encourages devs to include my email address, for example, seems really invasive, and probably would be illegal under the GDPR?
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#18I didn't know it was a secret? Figured it was pretty common knowledge back when iBeacons and similar were announced and when major retailers like Target even made press releases about it https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/20/target-rolls-out-bluetooth... Kind of funny that Apple pushing privacy basically helped create this kind of tracking to begin with. Edit: NYT article mentions other apps selling data to retailers. I…
Apple? Maybe it's the big stores and advertisers want to know everything about everybody that are to blame?
Yes Apple. They rolled out iBeacons and created a whole toolkit on ios that enabled tracking - at least a lot easier than it would have been.
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#19I didn't know it was a secret? Figured it was pretty common knowledge back when iBeacons and similar were announced and when major retailers like Target even made press releases about it https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/20/target-rolls-out-bluetooth... Kind of funny that Apple pushing privacy basically helped create this kind of tracking to begin with. Edit: NYT article mentions other apps selling data to retailers. I…
I had heard of the technology, but had no idea how widespread it was. To be honest, I had assumed it never took off.
Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you need is something similar to EU-GDPR! This would be illegal on so many levels in Europe.
fyi BLE tracking is both completely legal and has wide spread usage all across the EU. there’s hundreds of EU-based companies that provide these kinds of services.
Getting the data might not be illegal, but storing it without a direct reason or permission would be illegal