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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

#251

Post by Spooky23 »

ihodes wrote: post #227
Spooky23 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I called and asked Enfamil. They readily provided the name of the marketing list. When I bought it, you had to get a minimum number of entries, which I did by targeting a couple of local zip codes.

I don’t have ready access to it now, but it had all sorts of stuff, probably about 150 columns. Stuff ranging from likely medical conditions to car owned, to stores frequently shopped to specific consumer products used.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#252

Post by Spooky23 »

nerdponx wrote: post #242
Spooky23 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a thing 10-15 years ago with a business associate building retail. He had average income for everyone driving by, some profession data, all sources from mobile carriers.

What's funny about all this data collection is, does it really help sales all that much?

I think it helps when you’re siting locations from a thousand miles away and don’t know the areas you are investing in. You don’t want to drop a Dollar General in an upscale suburban environment, nor drop a Chipotle a half mile away in a trailer park corridor.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#253

Post by rhizome »

cortesoft wrote: post #120
TeMPOraL wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is marketing at its worst. This is marketing at its real. As practiced. > I don't think telling people the product you created to serve their need is inherently evil. Of course it isn't evil, but this is not what marketing is doing - and claiming so amounts to a motte-and-bailey defense of an industry that's rotten to the core and quite openly malicious towards their fellow human beings.

I am not defending these practices at all, I am just saying the idea of marketing is not inherently evil. I also think you are being unfair if you say there are zero companies that do marketing right.

You were the first person to call the idea of marketing evil here.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#254

Post by smilliken »

HaloZero wrote: post #42

Is there a way to determine which apps have the SDKs from Reveal or other companies?

Yes. My company (MixRank) downloads and analyzes mobile apps. Among other things, we determine what SDKs, APIs, etc, an app uses. We have 20k SDKs identified and track all of their installs/uninstalls.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#255

Post by cherrypepsi »

imperialdrive wrote: post #210
xur17 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish android differentiated between foreground and background location permissions.

Meet the newest Android Q (10) which is available as a beta. The permission levels are there for what you wish. It's impressive to see just how many apps were previously getting background location (and many other) permissions by default. Eye opening experience for someone that figured it wasn't that bad.

> Meet the newest Android Q (10) which is available as a beta. The permission levels are there for what you wish.

I would like to congratulate Google for such hard work. I mean, CyanogenMod 7 in 2010 could revoke any app permission at the user's will, but you know, computers are difficult

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#256

Post by 0xffff2 »

manyxcxi wrote: post #220
0xffff2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer, but I've never touched mobile dev at all. Could you clarify what "running in the background" means here? I see it come up a lot and I'm never quite sure. Specifically, if I have an app installed, but it's not open in any way (e.g. in iOS I double tap home and swipe up on the app's window to close it) can the app still run any code? Am I safe from these "background" vulnerabilities as long as I aggres…

They can if given permission to. For certain apps in iOS it’s usually an application asking for location permissions without a real good reason for it, that’s why (in my opinion) it seems like weather apps are some of the worst offenders for this stuff, as it makes sense to give it location permissions. There are other permissions that can be abused as well, but location is the dead give away. I can’t speak to Androi…

Thanks. That's pretty unfortunate. I guess I'll just be event more aggressive about denying permissions requests and uninstalling any app I don't have a good reason to keep now.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#257

Post by graeme »

clairity wrote: post #246
graeme wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It keeps the watch, pencil and airpods connected. Disconnects my third party keyboard. Unsure how it works in the mall scenario. Anyone know? Occurs to me I could shut wifi fully off when leaving home, and turn bluetooth off with the toggle to still use my devices. Don’t know if that’s useful however. Used to use airplane mode all the time, but modern convenience became too great.

hmmm, are you sure these things stay connected? i just tried with those 3 items and none stayed connected when i fake turned-off bluetooth on my iphone/ipad. or maybe it's a feature of the newer devices? my apple devices are older and have bluetooth 4.2 still.

Dead certain. Are you on ios 12? If you're on an older version, that could explain it.

When I turn it off, the bluetooth menu in settings says "new bluetooth connections have been turned off from control center"

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