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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

#31

Post by seieste »

Malic wrote: post #16
2bitencryption wrote: post #12

am I understanding this mechanism right? 1. Set up a bluetooth beacon in the diary aisle that broadcasts as a connectable (nor not?) device with an "SSID" (or the bluetooth equivelant) that is a known GUID 2. apps on your phone can scan for available bluetooth devices, and see the presence of the GUID, which is enough for them to know you are in the dairy aisle of Store 1234. if that's right, does this mean disabling…

Basically it means those loyalty apps stores put out? Are you sure you know what that app is doing...? You are right that disabling bluetooth or being aware of what apps your phone has is what is required.

You don't need the Target app to be tracked by Target, since the tracking beacon code can be in any number of unrelated apps (weather, news, games, etc.)

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#32

Post by sysbin »

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…

I'm guessing this can be policed by a service allowing the user to see a map containing location detail & time accessed information per apps installed. Thus, showing the user which apps installed are signaling with bluetooth and when they're entering specific stores throughout the day.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#33

Post by nickpsecurity »

sysbin wrote: post #32
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…

I'm guessing this can be policed by a service allowing the user to see a map containing location detail & time accessed information per apps installed. Thus, showing the user which apps installed are signaling with bluetooth and when they're entering specific stores throughout the day.

Sounds like a good idea!

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#34

Post by TaylorAlexander »

Yep and I’ve been researching this for robotics. The new WiFi standard 802.11mc includes improved time-of-flight measurement of radio packets such that the device can be localized to within 1 meter reliably. Android 9 and the Pixel already support this, though WiFi APs supporting this are still in the early phases. Google WiFi supports it tho.

The good news is that this technology does not tell the AP where you are, only the device knows. However an app on your device could share this information with advertisers.

https://www.crowdconnected.com/blog/testing-wifi-rtt-on-andr...

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#36

Post by rolltiide »

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 you that have probably reacted to the same external stimulus and can be predicted to be thinking about a certain product around that point in time.

POOF - an ad about that thing you talked about, now on your Facebook feed.

Zuckerberg gets hauled in front of Congress, accurately says "what? no we don't do that", data brokers and software engineers laugh to the bank and let Zuckerberg get crucified for their sins.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#37

Post by halbritt »

ajkjk wrote: post #8

Nothing would make me want to buy yogurt less than an ad on my phone while I'm looking at yogurt. I would hope everyone would feel the same way, to disincentivize this.

This is what I'm thinking.

The first time this happens, I'm not going to buy the thing, but I'm going to jump through whatever hoops are necessary to disable this feature on my device. If that doesn't work, I'm going to get another device and then I'm never going to patronize whatever retailer did this.

I suspect eventually this will make people irate and these sorts of things will become opt-in.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#38

Post by slg »

dawnerd wrote: post #10

I didn't know it was a secret? Figured it was pretty common knowledge back when iBeacons and similar were announced and when major retailers like Target even made press releases about it https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/20/target-rolls-out-bluetooth... Kind of funny that Apple pushing privacy basically helped create this kind of tracking to begin with. Edit: NYT article mentions other apps selling data to retailers. I…

Wasn't this tracking the defining business use case going all the way back to when Apple introduced them in 2013? These devices might not be well know, but I don't think anyone was actively trying to hide why businesses were installing these things.

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#39

Post by muricula »

In order for this to work the apps have to listen to bluetooth signals from the beacons (or register a hook for an OS level beacon listening service?). How do I prevent an app from listening to bluetooth? Is this gated by the iOS "access current location" permission, or the "bluetooth sharing" permission? The iOS docs I've found are unclear: https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/Getting-Started-with-iBe...

Re: Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

#40

Post by madMapper »

bdz wrote: post #9

Apple's iBeacon location-aware shopping goes live today (2013) https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5181302/apple-store-ibeac... Beacon Technology Arrives in 50 Target Stores (2015) https://corporate.target.com/article/2015/08/beacon-technolo...

Now that the privacy pendulum is swinging the other way I'm curious if Apple will ultimately be the undoing of this thing they helped create. If devices using iOS 13 start broadcasting a constantly changing bluetooth ID as a part of the new "Find My" feature these systems won't be able to track users from beacon to beacon or know how long you were in range of a single beacon.

This will probably wreak havoc on traffic counters and other infrastructure that use bluetooth bacons to do things like monitor highway congestion and foot traffic

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