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Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

nytimes.com

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Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#171

Post by Spooky23 »

fingerlocks wrote: post #161
pariahHN wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem I think is that these people don't actually comprehend what is happening and the possible consequences. To them it's just a magic black box.

Maybe I’m one of these people. What exactly are the consequences? So far, the most damaging consequence of overreaching customer privacy is the famous teenage pregnancy leak when Target sent out coupon mailers to expecting moms based on shopping history. That’s a really weirdly specific issue, and hard to imaging a similar scenario that would affect my life in some equally horrible way. Am I missing something? Why sh…

My wife got a box of Enfamil Fedexed to our door as a promotion on what would have been the due date of our baby. Unfortunately, she miscarried at 3 months.

They knew this because marketers get near real-time access to prescriptions, hospital admissions and other things.

You should care because your information will be sold or traded, and behaviors can be correlated against medical and other outcomes.

Are you a divorced dad who has moved within 90 days and play daily fantasy sports? I can buy a list that will find you for $250. You are a risk for opioid addiction and may get denied service in the future for medical issues. Or you may attract advertising tailored to get you to gamble or drink more, when you are at your most vulnerable.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#172

Post by aaronjmandel »

reaperducer wrote: post #116
ganoushoreilly wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used systems that leverage passive detection of Bluetooth, Wifi, and other radio signals as an indicator. No Apps required. Tying beacons into points of authentication (login from workspace) or transactional data at a register. A large portion of it was actually focused around security and not product marketing, but the tech is the same.

Tying beacons into points of authentication Reminds me of an old Mac application from PowerPC days that would sense your phone's Bluetooth coming into the room and automatically unlock your computer. I thought it was pretty cool. Current Macs have that possibility built-in, but it only works with the Watch.

I use MacID app on my iOS device to quickly wake my OSx machine via Bluetooth and authenticate w touchID. I think it's pretty slick. Not for the security crucial installation but fine for home.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#173

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #76

Maybe the existence of such toolkits is a Chesterton's Fence that says you can't make this work without something installed on the phone. But this would be possible without these trojans. If the Bluetooth beacon configures itself as a master, and enters inquiry mode, phones that pass nearby will happily respond with their Bluetooth ID (see https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/downloaddoc.ashx?d... , section 8.4)…

A company I worked for was interested in installing these WiFi locators in its buildings to study how people move through them - it turns out it doesn't work that well outside of fully clear spaces (so it can't be crowded, there can't bee too much furniture - although you might be able to deal with the latter if you spend a long time calibrating) + it requires dedicated devices (with faster clocks). Definitely doable though.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#174

Post by dghughes »

rolltiide wrote: post #36
andrewgioia wrote: post #24

This is rage inducing. I went into this article thinking "ok as long as I don't have the Target or Ikea or whatever app installed on my phone, I'm fine." While that is a primary way, this needs to be outlawed: > These companies take their beacon tracking code and bundle it into a toolkit developers can use. The makers of many popular apps, such as those for news or weather updates, insert these toolkits into their ap…

This is how an app like Facebook can show you an ad on something you were talking about. It would be naive to point the finger at Facebook listening to you, it would be more accurate to assume its EVERY OTHER app (including FB) gathering data about you and your surroundings - MAYBE ONE IS ACTUALLY LISTENING - but whether any individual app is or isn't, the data brokers have all the data as well as other people like y…

> This is how an app like Facebook can show you an ad on something you were talking about.

I helped my sister look at a new car an hour away in another town. Back home that evening YouTube was suddenly suggesting new car videos.

Not so much Bluetooth as my own fault for using Google products and tracking but still it was disturbing. I did not search for anything car related myself or for my sister all I did was visit a car dealership.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#175

Post by chairmanwow »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #76

Maybe the existence of such toolkits is a Chesterton's Fence that says you can't make this work without something installed on the phone. But this would be possible without these trojans. If the Bluetooth beacon configures itself as a master, and enters inquiry mode, phones that pass nearby will happily respond with their Bluetooth ID (see https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/downloaddoc.ashx?d... , section 8.4)…

This is absolutely happening at scale in Chinese malls and even those small 7/11 style corner stores. Correlating profiles with Alipay/facial recognition/WiFi/Bluetooth tracking.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#176

Post by wakkaflokka »

I setup Home Assistant with the Raspberry Pi Bluetooth module to detect when my fiance and I were home or away (to turn on/off lights, turn off WeMo switches to the curling iron that my fiance always forgets). After a few weeks of forgetting I had it running, I logged back into the Home Assistant dashboard to notice that it was tracking nearly all of my neighbors Android phones, iPhones, headphones, TVs - when they were home, when they were away. Entirely passively. Most devices had names that could very easily be linked back to the user - i.e. "Joe's iPhone".

Just to reiterate - this was _entirely passive_. I did nothing but enable the Bluetooth presence detection module in Home Assistant on my Raspberry Pi, and over time it built up a detailed log of when nearly all of my neighbors were home or away.

Luckily I was able to quickly turn off tracking of devices that weren't explicitly enabled.

What confuses me, is that I thought iPhones had randomized MAC addresses? In the Home Assistant known_devices.yaml file, you can give aliases to phones based on their MAC address. And my iPhone has never changed it's MAC address, because Home Assistant continues to track it with ease. Not entirely sure how that works.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#177

Post by jankiehodgpodge »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #166
nxcho wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Pretend it is the 1970s in East Berlin and someone follows you around, noting down every interaction you have with other humans and every bit of media you consume and collects this information in a file somewhere for future use. This is the horrifying and oppressive surveillance machine of a paranoid dictatorship. 2. Use a computer to the the exact thing automatically today. This is just the natural state of the w…

There is a clear difference between 1970s East Berlin and now. Stasi spying propped up a system that provided a relatively low standard of living and a limited availability of consumer goods. Modern tracking of customers fuels a vibrant customer-good market that is a win-win for everyone.

Except this technology is being used in China today to monitor the bulk of every purchase, every internet site visited and every message sent and received.

The Stasi hid cameras in handbags and behind buttons but regimes operating today do not need to operate in such corse ways.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#178

Post by skinnymuch »

navigatesol wrote: post #146
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's kind of creepy, but if it gives me good suggestions, I don't really care." This is an Unpopular Opinion, but IMHO thats kind of a reasonable stance to take.

> This is an Unpopular Opinion, but IMHO thats kind of a reasonable stance to take. I disagree. The recommendation is immediate and apparent to the end-user. The negative potential uses/consequences of all the other data collection are not. It's funny, but when an unsuspecting person gets a home loan they can't possibly afford pushed on them by a shifty mortgage broker, people here cry bloody murder. But when people…

All Reddit twitter and HN do is complain about data privacy and ads. It’s the complete opposite of ever being “they asked for it”. Can you find any big thread with more than a few small comments Resembling “they asked for it”? I can give you tons of examples for data privacy and anti ad stances. Just go to any FB thread. Or even this thread.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#179

Post by graeme »

r00fus wrote: post #71
eunoia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If devices using iOS 13 start broadcasting a constantly changing bluetooth ID They've always done this. I think you have your threat model inverted. Beacons aren't tracking phones around stores. 3rd party SDKs installed in apps are tracking user's indoor location via beacon triangulation and uploading that data. A subtle, but important difference.

Shouldn't Apple ban apps using those SDKs? Is it identifiable from a source scan or binary trawl?

In ios 13 they added bluetooth and wifi access as privacy toggles. Does this prevent this sort of tracking by apps if turned off?

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#180

Post by graeme »

dpkonofa wrote: post #169
givinguflac wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS 13 actually has BT permissions per-app, and blocking that has no bearing on bt audio as that’s handled on the system level. It’s quite eye opening. Netflix for example wants access to BT even though there is absolutely no Netflix accessory that would warrant such access. I’m pretty thrilled about the change and it only cements my choice of iOS for me.

That still won't change much, though, because, inevitably, there will be some app that requires Bluetooth for some fundamental aspect of its use that will also use one of these SDK's. Granting that app access to this will give it all the info it needs. What really needs to happen is that Apple needs to make some of these beacon-able permissions more granular. How to do that in a way that a tech-naive population under…

Which app types require permanent bluetooth access? Bearing in mind that connected to bluetooth audio is handled for apps by the system.

Not being snarky, genuinely unsure what would need this. You’re definitely right that a single app with permissions and the sdks would be enough.

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