Retail Stores Use Bluetooth Beacons To Track Customers (nytimes.com) 47
In an opinion piece for The New York Times, writer Michael Kwet sheds some lights on the secret bluetooth surveillance devices retailers use to track your every move and better serve ads to you. Anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Imagine you are shopping in your favorite grocery store. As you approach the dairy aisle, you are sent a push notification in your phone: "10 percent off your favorite yogurt! Click here to redeem your coupon." You considered buying yogurt on your last trip to the store, but you decided against it. How did your phone know? Your smartphone was tracking you. The grocery store got your location data and paid a shadowy group of marketers to use that information to target you with ads. Recent reports have noted how companies use data gathered from cell towers, ambient Wi-Fi, and GPS. But the location data industry has a much more precise, and unobtrusive, tool: Bluetooth beacons. These beacons are small, inobtrusive electronic devices that are hidden throughout the grocery store; an app on your phone that communicates with them informed the company not only that you had entered the building, but that you had lingered for two minutes in front of the low-fat Chobanis.
Most location services use cell towers and GPS, but these technologies have limitations. Cell towers have wide coverage, but low location accuracy: An advertiser can think you are in Walgreens, but you're actually in McDonald's next door. GPS, by contrast, can be accurate to a radius of around five meters (16 feet), but it does not work well indoors. Bluetooth beacons, however, can track your location accurately from a range of inches to about 50 meters. They use little energy, and they work well indoors. That has made them popular among companies that want precise tracking inside a store. In order to track you or trigger an action like a coupon or message to your phone, companies need you to install an app on your phone that will recognize the beacon in the store. Retailers (like Target and Walmart) that use Bluetooth beacons typically build tracking into their own apps. But retailers want to make sure most of their customers can be tracked -- not just the ones that download their own particular app.
Most location services use cell towers and GPS, but these technologies have limitations. Cell towers have wide coverage, but low location accuracy: An advertiser can think you are in Walgreens, but you're actually in McDonald's next door. GPS, by contrast, can be accurate to a radius of around five meters (16 feet), but it does not work well indoors. Bluetooth beacons, however, can track your location accurately from a range of inches to about 50 meters. They use little energy, and they work well indoors. That has made them popular among companies that want precise tracking inside a store. In order to track you or trigger an action like a coupon or message to your phone, companies need you to install an app on your phone that will recognize the beacon in the store. Retailers (like Target and Walmart) that use Bluetooth beacons typically build tracking into their own apps. But retailers want to make sure most of their customers can be tracked -- not just the ones that download their own particular app.
Dupe? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Under which rock are you livin? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, same article, different title.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't msmash just post this?
On Slashdot, everyone gets 30 minutes of fame!
"an app on your phone that communicates with them" (Score:1)
What app is that, now?
Re: (Score:2)
Replying to my own post, the article summary verbiage now reads:
"companies need you to install an app on your phone that will recognize the beacon in the store. Retailers (like Target and Walmart) that use Bluetooth beacons typically build tracking into their own apps."
Question answered.
Re:"an app on your phone that communicates with th (Score:5, Insightful)
'build tracking into their own apps'
And every app you choose to install on your phone where you have agreed to give the publisher rights to use your metrics as they see fit. What they see fit, is to sell the data to aggregators. Your device fingerprint, and location data is then sold to marketers. Sometimes the user id is also included in that package.
It's incredible that people will freely install an app that has no more functionality than normal HTTP services provide, except to steal resources and metrics.
It's far past time that people wake up and just say no to a service provider that only provides features from their 'app'. Then again, ignorance is bliss and the masses are always grapes for the savvy to pluck at will.
Re: "an app on your phone that communicates with t (Score:2, Insightful)
Or you can just turn off bluetooth on your device.
Re: (Score:2)
True. But there are so many people with bluetooth earbuds permanently stuck in their ears listening to music or chatting on the phone while they {shop, commute, work, ..} so this is not really a useful suggestion for them.
Re: (Score:2)
And there are people like me who have Bluetooth hearing aids.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, I prefer the idea of asking to see the manager and then hurling abuse at them detailing the offence and walking out the store never to return. Now how will that advertising work for them then, I am serious. Attack my device like that in a store and you will receive public abuse and total loss of custom.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless I'm expecting to make or receive a phone call in my car, Bluetooth is ALWAYS off.
What use is it otherwise?
Why would people have a battery sapping app turned on when shopping?
I'm honestly curious!
Bluetooth accessories (Score:2)
they might need it on for their earphones/earbuds when calling/listening music, even more so on modern jackless smartphone that don't have any alternative to Bluetooth.
They might need the connection up for other smart gadgets that they are wearing: if they are addicted to their smartwatch/fitness tracker (maybe even for something simple as getting visual/vibration alets on their wrist, instead of sound alerts from the phone) these device tend often to use a Bluetooth link.
People like you who, but who got to
Re: (Score:1)
I'd assume company needs permission before it could do tracking that's this intrusive? Let's hope for them it's in the terms & conditions customer agreed with when installing the app. Otherwise that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
More likely such terms & conditions have been kept vague on purpose. So that when called out, company can say "well we did ask permission to collect data, and it didn't say exactly what data or not".
Still a slimy thing to do, imho. Having cameras up for theft
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Most frequently, Google Maps and Google (the "Google" "app").
Re: (Score:2)
"Most frequently, Google Maps and Google (the "Google" "app")."
I disagree. Their TOS is transparent, disclosed and the user can opt out and still have utility from the service. There's a significant difference in the data and metrics I choose to provide, that is beneficial for my usage. That's a whole world away from the cellular providers selling polling location data to about anyone that wants it or applications that utilize resources that have absolutely no benefit for application services or the
Retail store? (Score:4, Funny)
Is that like Amazon for old people?
Holy duplicates, Batman! (Score:1)
Didn't I read this 2 hours ago?
Re: (Score:2)
"Didn't I read this 2 hours ago?"
It's called Déjà lu.
I have solved that problem (Score:5, Funny)
This is exactly why I always turn off Bluetooth as well as WiFi on my phone.
Since this may not be enough to keep me anonymous, I also activate Flight Mode, turn off the phone, wrap it up in alu-foil and put it in a lead-lined briefcase. To further ensure that my phone does not leak any data, I put the briefcase in my radiation-proof vault, which I have dug into the bedrock under my house ... And now I'm laughing like a madman every time I read stories like this — they don't catch me out!
Some friends have suggested that I took a sledgehammer or similar crushing instrument to the phone ... Silly idea, that would break the phone and make it unusable.
Dup comment (Score:3)
Is Slashdot editor really a paid job?
Faraday Cage Bag (Score:2)
I got my wife to sew me a soon-to-be-patented Faraday Cage. ;-)
I musta been the first to thunk it
But really I do have and use a wife built bag for my smart-snitch. If anyone tries to patent this someone should use this post against them. Some super thin aluminum foil (chewing gum wrapper thin) between two fabric layers and some "quilting stitches" (what do I know from stitches?).
I thought I marked this as Dupe (Score:2)
What moderator didn't bother reading the downrated Dupe?
Re: (Score:2)
Outrage over what? (Score:2)
Apps that employ beacon tech for tracking have been available since 2015 when Apple introduce iBeacons. Google followed shortly afterwards with Eddystone. Beacons themselves are only BLE devices. Ibeacons emit a identifier and 2 integer values that uniquely identify the beacon to your software. The Identifier can be assigned by the beacon manufacture or by the vendor. The software can be made to monitor for certain groups of beacons.
You, the user, have to give permission to install the app as well as t