Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers • Hacker News Board

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#221

Post by ganoushoreilly » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

brianpayne2 wrote: post #105

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.

Does the BT detection work the same way that WiFi access point scanning works? I know that app developers use this WiFi tech from a client (device) side to determine location, but I am a bit disturbed about the aspect of this being so accurate with BT devices.

Yes passive signal detection behaves like this. Apple uses passive and active Bluetooth in their stores to determine what products you are looking at.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#222

Post by sizzle » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #92

social_quotient wrote: post #69

It’s worse. I have personal knowledge from a lot client work in this space. There are companies offering some basic functions like “wayfinding” so the retailer or mall wants to give wayfinding to the user in their app. Sounds good, in fact it’s cheap, and they will even handle the beacon deployment... hook up sdk to wireshark and find it sending lots of data, some of it comes to me (retailer api) but a metric ton of…

Yes that's exactly how this gets implemented in practice. I did quite a bit of client work here too, specifically around using already existing surveillance camera networks to build user profiles. At the end of the day the goal is to optimize for the intersection of "what the user wants" and "what we want to sell." So, a low collection system will give bad recommendations and a really good recommendation system will…

What kind of profiling did you do? How did you account for any biases in your algorithms?

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#223

Post by fyfy18 » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

What exactly are retailers doing with this data, that they couldn't do before? If you go to a supermarket and pay by credit card, the supermarket is going to have a profile on what type of things you like to buy, even if you aren't a member of their loyalty program. They've been doing this since loyalty cards became popular in the 90s.

It seems somewhat benign, and not very useful, that they know I spent 45 seconds in front of the yogurt section, compared to the average at that time of 28 seconds. Maybe a friend I haven't spoken to for a long time started messaging me. Or maybe I was helping an elderly person get something from the top shelf.

The part about eending ads to your device is FUD, any app that starts doing that without my permission is getting uninstalled straight away.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#224

Post by cma » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #205

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Without these trojans the store would have on its hands a major networking infrastructure project. With these trojans, all they have to do is drop a few battery-powered beacons in their venue and store their IDs along with coordin…

"The store" that implements these is probably not a mom-and-pop. Places like Walmart succeed because of their ability to execute major logistics and networking projects. If the beacons increased Wal-Mart's revenue by 1%, the "major networking infrastructure" project could be a $5 billion department, larger than Google's entire R&D operating expenses.

Can't compare revenue to operating expenses for funding a new department, should use earnings minus income taxes instead. It would be closer to funding a $1 billion department.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#225

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

dmje wrote: post #141

The really simple answer? Give up your smartphone. It's eating your life anyway, crossing boundaries with your family / work. You're addicted to checking: your downtime is zero, your free space to think: negligible. Mindfulness: none. Mindlessness: maximum. Just a thought.

How is this kind of "advice" anything but plain old-fashioned victim-blaming?

If ever an entire category of HN posts deserved an instant trip to -4 territory, these ever-present and singularly-unhelpful posts ("Just turn your phone off/leave it in airplane mode/leave it at home/give it up for Lent/sell it on Craigslist/go to Uttar Pradesh and join a Zen monastery") should more than qualify.

Letting scumbags dictate how you live your life -- or how you use your phone -- is never the optimal strategy. Don't turn off. Fight back.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#226

Post by SomeOldThrow » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #118

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's exactly how this gets implemented in practice. I did quite a bit of client work here too, specifically around using already existing surveillance camera networks to build user profiles. At the end of the day the goal is to optimize for the intersection of "what the user wants" and "what we want to sell." So, a low collection system will give bad recommendations and a really good recommendation system will…

> "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.

If you don’t consider impulse buying or recreational shopping or private surveillance networks a problem, sure.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#227

Post by ihodes » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 6:13 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #219

remarkEon wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you are saying is true (I'm genuinely asking), that sounds like behavior that should absolutely be made illegal and severely punished. I try to maintain a "lite" internet footprint (no facebook, only social media is LinkedIn, I use a VPN when I can) ... it's a little disturbing to think that someone can just purchase my buying history and use it as, essentially, an attack vector to serve me ads or gaslight me…

Yes, you are. The events surrounding what happened to my wife was very painful (an ectopic pregnancy that nearly killed her), and a thoughtless reminder was very unwelcome. I still feel violated and betrayed. In our case, I found out the marketing list from Enfamil and bought it for my zip code. I complained to the hospitals’ privacy officer and the state regulator and found that everything was legal. There is a lot…

That's really awful; I'm so sorry you both had to go through that.

Would you mind sharing more information about how you found that list (esp for a given zip), and how you think they tied that information to an address? My email is in my profile, if you wouldn't mind reaching out.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#228

Post by sizzle » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 6:17 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #223

What exactly are retailers doing with this data, that they couldn't do before? If you go to a supermarket and pay by credit card, the supermarket is going to have a profile on what type of things you like to buy, even if you aren't a member of their loyalty program. They've been doing this since loyalty cards became popular in the 90s. It seems somewhat benign, and not very useful, that they know I spent 45 seconds i…

We aren't privy to the back office deals they are brokering with our data across advertisers and what not.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#229

Post by dpkonofa » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #215

jschwartzi wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitbit is a good example. I'm willing to bet a good amount of money that they sell a lot of the BLE beacon data they snarf up alongside their heart rate monitor data.

Fitbit is a good example of an app that requires permanent Bluetooth access, but a terrible example of a company likely to sell user data. Fitbit's users are its customers, and are the source of $1.5 billion per year in revenue. Any money gained from selling that data would be miniscule in comparison, and would put the main revenue stream at risk by alienating customers. I work for but don't speak for Fitbit.

It's not Fitbit that necessarily is collecting this data, though. Fitbit might simply be using an SDK for Bluetooth detection, for example, that's provided by a company that does sell user data. The number of paid platforms and frameworks that are out there and used by all kinds of companies is crazy and it's not too big of a stretch to realize that some kind of tracking framework runs on the business of aggregating and selling that data while only providing the company in question using the framework with some of it.

It's not even too big of a stretch to realize how many free WordPress frameworks out there collect and sell aggregated site visitor data. I mean... if you're using a free Google Analytics service, do you honestly think they're not doing something with all that access to your site info?

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

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Post by gruez » Sat, Jun 15, 2019, 7:35 AM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #211

gruez wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And when you swipe your card to check out they have your name, even if you don't use a loyalty card I thought the name’s embossed on the card, but not on the magstripe/EMV chip data?

It's very much encoded in the track data. It may not be in clear-text by the time it leaves the reader but it's encoded in the data.

Do you mind linking to a source? Wikipedia has details on it, but it doesn't say anything about names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card#Financial...