Apparently Nordstrom did an experiment with this for a while - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper... - even going as far as monitoring passing traffic so you could monitor the percentage of people passing who actually come into the store. This could be pretty fascinating in the context of running certain types of window displays, sales/offers, etc, and lead to ecommerce-style split testing and the like. It says they stopped the experiment partly due to people whining though, but I imagine it'll just go 'under the radar' in future since it could be too valuable not to try.
Density.io
91–100 of 189 posts
Re: Density.io
#92Keep in mind that these "anonymous" data points aren't. Your phones MAC address exposes your home wifi network thanks to Google's databases. They also expose where you work, where your friends houses are, what your favorite coffee shop is. This is beyond dangerous, it's completely unacceptable.
unacceptable on which end? The coffee shop collecting the info or your phone exposing it?
Re: Density.io
#93Risky. MAC address tracking is definitely a legal 'grey area' at the moment. I can imagine mining/fingerprinting in this way could easily become illegal in the not-to-distant future. In the UK, City of London already banned the wifi-enabled bins that were tracking MAC addresses. It would be really easy to tie a name to MAC address (from point of purchase with a credit card), then see exactly where that person went vi…
City of Houston does MAC address tracking on the freeways and surface streets to power their traffic tracking measures. It's probably used in hundreds of other places you haven't thought about. If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/
> If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off.
No, you shouldn't have to turn off a very commonly used service so that people can do better business by tracking it in an intrusive manner. Privacy should be the default option in such programs.
If the city used a ton of cameras + facial recognition to track you and your car everywhere and then sold that data to companies so they could optimize for whatever meaningless metric, would you still be as casual about this, and go "Oh, you should just cover your face and walk everywhere if you expect privacy."?
Re: Density.io
#94Keep in mind that these "anonymous" data points aren't. Your phones MAC address exposes your home wifi network thanks to Google's databases. They also expose where you work, where your friends houses are, what your favorite coffee shop is. This is beyond dangerous, it's completely unacceptable.
unacceptable on which end? The coffee shop collecting the info or your phone exposing it?
Google shouldn't have collected the data, devices shouldn't be announcing previously connected networks, and this awful privacy destroying system shouldn't exist.
Re: Density.io
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the advantage to a constant MAC address anyway? There must be a reason for it, but my first reaction to this article was to see if I could change mine.
Collision avoidance mostly.
If an unique identifier is needed, it can still be generated on a short term basis. Make it a GUID and we have generators ready that can do this without risk of collisions.
Re: Density.io
#96Ok so this system works by tracking MAC addresses. I assume the same sort of system using cameras and facial recognition would work too, and you can't turn off your face. I assume this must be already happening somewhere.
The amount of privacy we think we have must be a small fraction of what we actually have.
Re: Density.io
#97Without wishing to belittle the privacy concerns of my fellow HNers, I wonder how long it will take for people to just be ok with being tracked in this way? This seems like one of those social changes that feels strange and uncomfortable at first, but over time becomes the accepted norm.
Re: Density.io
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
How will you know?
I guess I have to start looking towards outlets. I wonder if there is any other way to 'protect' yourself?
Leave your electronics in the car?
(or some similar strategy if that still seems risky)
But then you have to start worrying about facial recognition.
Re: Density.io
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
City of Houston does MAC address tracking on the freeways and surface streets to power their traffic tracking measures. It's probably used in hundreds of other places you haven't thought about. If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/
> If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off. No, you shouldn't have to turn off a very commonly used service so that people can do better business by tracking it in an intrusive manner. Privacy should be the default option in such programs. If the city used a ton of cameras + facial recognition to track you and your car everywhere and then sold that data to companies so they could optimize for whateve…
It's trivial to turn off the wireless on your phone. If you want privacy in this day and age it's not going to be convenient. The difference is I can't turn off my face.
Re: Density.io
#100my density has bought me to you