Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

I think the biggest misconception here is the belief that Bluetooth LE beacons are tracking phones. The beacons themselves operate as transmit-only and don’t receive any data and therefore don’t perform any tracking themselves. The more correct way to look at this is that the apps are tracking a user’s location, and the beacons are providing the app with information to determine the current location.

If the app’s knowledge of your location provides some service and the user is opting-in, this shouldn’t be a problem (just like I opt-in to provide Google Maps my location).

The keys here are (1) users should be aware that an app knows your location, and (2) User should have the ability to opt-in to providing my location to the app. The mobile operating systems should do a better job of making the user aware and making it very easy to opt in or out.

Maybe an ideal solution would be where (assuming the user opts-in) the OS automatically controls whether an app has the ability to use Bluetooth locationing when the GPS detects that I’m in a certain area. For example, the Target app is prevented from using Bluetooth tracking most of the time, but when my phone GPS sees that I’m in a Target store it automatically enables it while I’m there, and disables it when I leave.

letjamz.com

From your link, it looks like "Name" is in Track 1:

  Start sentinel — one character (generally '%')
  Format code="B" — one character (alpha only)
  Primary account number (PAN) — up to 19 characters. 
  Field Separator — one character (generally '^')
  Name  — 2 to 26 characters
  ...

I'm just over a year into it. I'm going to write this up in more detail at some point but broadly my strategy has been:

1) Keep a smartphone without a SIM in it at home on wifi for banking / 2FA / etc

2) Move everything social off it. I was never a FB user, but I'm into Twitter and news - so those two got canned, as did Instagram

3) Take work email off it. If you can't, turn off all notifications. If people want you, they'll ring you.

4) Anything you want to do, do it on your desktop - you have way more control here. I use https://heyfocus.com on "hardcore" mode, which blocks Tweetdeck, email, news, HN, whatever so I can actually get work done

5) Have a dumbphone for out-and-about use. It's painful, awful texting, no camera - but it is remarkably liberating to have moments of boredom, moments when you'd normally take a photo but can now just admire the view, moments when you have to actually "ring" someone (I know, this is apparently a thing..)

6) Never let your smartphone into your bedroom, ever

7) Put any gadgets on charge upstairs after 6pm, and leave them there on silent until the morning

It works for me. It hurts, and sometimes I slip (if I have to travel with work, I normally re-sim-ify my smartphone for maps or whatever), but in general I feel more a part of the world I'm supposed to be spending my life in, rather than down a rabbithole of virtual nothingness.

The first and easiest way to try this is simply to leave your phone at home when you go out for a period of time. Redirect calls to your partner if you need - but just try it. There's a Zen saying: "if you don't have 10 minutes to meditate each day, you should meditate for 20 minutes". If it hurts, try it for a longer period of time!

Sure, but the Beacon technology was designed for this cheaper type of use (dumb beacon, smart phone) from the get-go - people working on it probably may have wanted it to be useful not just for the biggest chains, but also smaller franchises and mom-and-pop stores (why limit your market prematurely?). In the alternate reality in which BLE beacons were never created, maybe Wal-Mart did its own major project to get the same results the hard way.