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Thread: Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell

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    Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell

    Thank you Edward Snowden for helping people become more aware of what we already knew, but another story to keep issues about privacy hopefully at the forefront.

    Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell




    Big Data Hits Real Life: Brick-and-mortar stores are looking for a chance to catch up with their online competitors by using software that allows them to watch customers as they shop, and gather data about their behavior.


    By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and QUENTIN HARDY

    Published: July 14, 2013 404 Comments


    Like dozens of other brick-and-mortar retailers, Nordstrom wanted to learn more about its customers — how many came through the doors, how many were repeat visitors — the kind of information that e-commerce sites like Amazon have in spades. So last fall the company started testing new technology that allowed it to track customers’ movements by following the Wi-Fi signals from their smartphones.

    Enlarge This Image

    Tina Fineberg for The New York Times

    Shelley Kohan, a vice president for RetailNext, with her company’s customer-tracking system, which employs video cameras.


    Readers’ Comments

    Share your thoughts.




    But when Nordstrom posted a sign telling customers it was tracking them, shoppers were unnerved.
    “We did hear some complaints,” said Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman for the store. Nordstrom ended the experiment in May, she said, in part because of the comments.
    Nordstrom’s experiment is part of a movement by retailers to gather data about in-store shoppers’ behavior and moods, using video surveillance and signals from their cellphones and apps to learn information as varied as their sex, how many minutes they spend in the candy aisle and how long they look at merchandise before buying it.
    All sorts of retailers — including national chains, like Family Dollar, Cabela’s and Mothercare, a British company, and specialty stores like Benetton and Warby Parker — are testing these technologies and using them to decide on matters like changing store layouts and offering customized coupons.
    But while consumers seem to have no problem with cookies, profiles and other online tools that let e-commerce sites know who they are and how they shop, some bristle at the physical version, at a time when government surveillance — of telephone calls, Internet activity and Postal Service deliveries — is front and center because of the leaks by Edward J. Snowden.
    “Way over the line,” one consumer posted to Facebook in response to a local news story about Nordstrom’s efforts at some of its stores. Nordstrom says the counts were made anonymous. Technology specialists, though, say the tracking is worrisome.
    “The idea that you’re being stalked in a store is, I think, a bit creepy, as opposed to, it’s only a cookie — they don’t really know who I am,” said Robert Plant, a computer information systems professor at the University of Miami School of Business Administration, noting that consumers can rarely control or have access to this data.
    Some consumers wonder how the information is used.
    “The creepy thing isn’t the privacy violation, it’s how much they can infer,” said Bradley Voytek, a neuroscientist who had stopped in at Philz Coffee in Berkeley, Calif. Philz uses technology from Euclid Analytics, of Palo Alto, Calif., the company that worked on the Nordstrom experiment, to measure the signals between a smartphone and a Wi-Fi antenna to count how many people walk by a store and how many enter.
    Still, physical retailers argue that they are doing nothing more than what is routinely done online.
    “Brick-and-mortar stores have been disadvantaged compared with online retailers, which get people’s digital crumbs,” said Guido Jouret, the head of Cisco’s emerging technologies group, which supplies tracking cameras to stores. Why, Mr. Jouret asked, should physical stores not “be able to tell if someone who didn’t buy was put off by prices, or was just coming in from the cold?” The companies that provide this technology offer a wide range of services.
    One, RetailNext, uses video footage to study how shoppers navigate, determining, say, that men spend only one minute in the coat department, which may help a store streamline its men’s outerwear layout. It also differentiates men from women, and children from adults.
    RetailNext, based in San Jose, Calif., adds data from shoppers’ smartphones to deduce even more specific patterns. If a shopper’s phone is set to look for Wi-Fi networks, a store that offers Wi-Fi can pinpoint where the shopper is in the store, within a 10-foot radius, even if the shopper does not connect to the network, said Tim Callan, RetailNext’s chief marketing officer.
    The store can also recognize returning shoppers, because mobile devices send unique identification codes when they search for networks. That means stores can now tell how repeat customers behave and the average time between visits.
    RetailNext also uses data to map customers’ paths; perhaps the shopper is 70 percent likely to go right immediately, or 14 percent likely to linger at a display, Mr. Callan said.
    More at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/bu...ell.html?_r=1&



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  3. #2
    With a hat tip to Mr. Leary I think it may be about time to "Tune out, Turn off and drop out."

  4. #3
    Unfortunately, NSA or not, this is a practice that will continue to grow. The only real thing a person can do about it is to stick to the mom-and-pop stores.

    Here's one of the things they are doing with the data:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_rule_learning

  5. #4


    http://www.technologyreview.com/view...-faraday-cage/

    Open the Phonekerchief whenever you want to make a call or receive messages.
    Welcome to the future.

  6. #5
    They can't track what I don't have.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by amy31416 View Post
    They can't track what I don't have.
    Dont be so sure.

    I personally installed 2 tracking systems at 2 different stores that literally track your body as you shop. Had nothing to do with what devices you may or may not be carrying. Once you enter the store you are assigned a unique shopper ID and you are tracked until you leave.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by amy31416 View Post
    They can't track what I don't have.
    They only need you, once the technology gets better it won't matter if you have device or not on your possession. They want to get inside of our brains, they want to know everything about us.
    "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by QuickZ06 View Post
    They only need you, once the technology gets better it won't matter if you have device or not on your possession. They want to get inside of our brains, they want to know everything about us.
    See post above yours... Technology is already there, already in use..



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by asurfaholic View Post
    See post above yours... Technology is already there, already in use..
    Yeah I had a bunch of tabs open (was answering a bunch of threads) and did not see yours until after I posted. Scary.
    "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    With a hat tip to Mr. Leary I think it may be about time to "Tune out, Turn off and drop out."
    presence = no cell phone

    'We endorse the idea of voluntarism; self-responsibility: Family, friends, and churches to solve problems, rather than saying that some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself and be a better person. It's a preposterous notion: It never worked, it never will. The government can't make you a better person; it can't make you follow good habits.' - Ron Paul 1988

    Awareness is the Root of Liberation Revolution is Action upon Revelation

    'Resistance and Disobedience in Economic Activity is the Most Moral Human Action Possible' - SEK3

    Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.

    ...the familiar ritual of institutional self-absolution...
    ...for protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment...


  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by asurfaholic View Post
    Dont be so sure.

    I personally installed 2 tracking systems at 2 different stores that literally track your body as you shop. Had nothing to do with what devices you may or may not be carrying. Once you enter the store you are assigned a unique shopper ID and you are tracked until you leave.
    Yeah--well, they at least don't have my name/address/phone number associated with that sort of tracking. Should make most store security obsolete, I'd think.

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by amy31416 View Post
    Yeah--well, they at least don't have my name/address/phone number associated with that sort of tracking. Should make most store security obsolete, I'd think.
    Facial recognition, you are in the system you cannot escape.
    "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by amy31416 View Post
    Yeah--well, they at least don't have my name/address/phone number associated with that sort of tracking. Should make most store security obsolete, I'd think.
    If you use any kind of card at checkout, then they have identification. Don't they want to make ID or passports scan-able at a distance, without your knowledge?
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by QuickZ06 View Post
    Facial recognition, you are in the system you cannot escape.
    That too.
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  17. #15
    already gave up cell phone - don't shop at major retail.. anything and somehow I don't think the *mission* is tracking anyone
    I guess the only place we go that we are completely sure they track every move we make is on base for medical and commissary - and that's not news. I get produce at open air produce markets.. about to be getting our grass fed beef that way too.
    Disclaimer: any post made after midnight and before 8AM is made before the coffee dip stick has come up to optomim level - expect some level of silliness,

    The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are out numbered by those who vote for a living !!!!!!!

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by asurfaholic View Post
    Dont be so sure.

    I personally installed 2 tracking systems at 2 different stores that literally track your body as you shop. Had nothing to do with what devices you may or may not be carrying. Once you enter the store you are assigned a unique shopper ID and you are tracked until you leave.
    Can the Unique ID be retreived the next time you come back?
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by DamianTV View Post
    Can the Unique ID be retreived the next time you come back?
    Not on the systems i worked. It wasn't a facial recognition system, just a movement tracker.
    Jc penny if anyone is wondering.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    If you use any kind of card at checkout, then they have identification. Don't they want to make ID or passports scan-able at a distance, without your knowledge?
    Generally don't shop at stores that have that, and the one that I infrequently go to doesn't have accurate info.

    I can leave my ID in my car.

    Not worried much (yet) about facial recognition. Too expensive, and I can always change things up.

    Don't make it easy for them.

  22. #19
    Stories like the OP are why I will always use a "dumb" phone.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by QuickZ06 View Post
    Facial recognition, you are in the system you cannot escape.
    Hats, Sunglasses, and Unbalanced Makeup do wonders.

    Quote Originally Posted by asurfaholic View Post
    Not on the systems i worked. It wasn't a facial recognition system, just a movement tracker.
    Jc penny if anyone is wondering.
    It will be Facial Recognition soon enough. Or worse, RFID Implant. Guaranteed, eventually.
    Last edited by DamianTV; 07-16-2013 at 02:10 PM.
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  24. #21
    Wow. Free country.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by DamianTV View Post
    Hats, Sunglasses, and Unbalanced Makeup do wonders.



    It will be Facial Recognition soon enough. Or worse, RFID Implant. Guaranteed, eventually.
    Thing is you cannot wear a hat and sunglasses inside banks. I am sure once facial recognition is more widely used it will carry over to other stores and what not with the same rules as well, you know for safety..... The makeup, well idk about that haha.
    "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by QuickZ06 View Post
    Thing is you cannot wear a hat and sunglasses inside banks. I am sure once facial recognition is more widely used it will carry over to other stores and what not with the same rules as well, you know for safety..... The makeup, well idk about that haha.
    I usually wear hats and sunglasses into banks. I suppose its only a matter of time before I get shot and / or tazered to death by an overzealous rent a cop.
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  27. #24
    A business has a right to analyze its in-store customer activity to increase profits and mitigate risk (shoplifting/vandalism). It also 'should' have a right to refuse service to anyone.

    The customer has the right to do business elsewhere.

    Casinos use facial-recognition to refuse service to people who are either really good at gambling, or otherwise known to cause a loss.



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by DamianTV View Post
    I usually wear hats and sunglasses into banks. I suppose its only a matter of time before I get shot and / or tazered to death by an overzealous rent a cop.
    Stay safe out there partner.
    "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

  30. #26
    They can use visual observation or video cams to achieve the same effect. Businesses have always sought to learn how to get customers to buy more stuff from them.

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    They can use visual observation or video cams to achieve the same effect. Businesses have always sought to learn how to get customers to buy more stuff from them.
    Hypothetical.

    Lets take it a step further. Lets say you own a Mom and Pop Convenience Store. Lets say you also sell Coca Cola in your store. Lets say also that Coca Cola has established a Tracking System so if a person that has purchased Coca Cola at ANY store that also uses its Tracking System, does that give Coca Cola the Right to track you in EVERY store without the person who is being tracked having the knowledge that they are being tracked? And aside from just not buying Coca Cola, imagine that it is EVERY PRODUCT and EVERY SERVICE in EVERY STORE.

    Do we the People just not have the Right to NOT BE TRACKED? I would imagine the People would say NO emphatically, and that these $#@!ing Mega Corporatiosn will demand YES. And Govt is going to go with who ever gives them the most money, the Corporations.

    ---

    The REAL problems start occuring when all the notes taken by tracking are compared. Then the consumer can be charged and fined and penalized out of existence without being provided ANY product or service.

    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  32. #28
    The creepy part is the fact that they did not inform customers. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this if they put some sort of sign up or something. A lot of the boutiques and stores I shop at will have a sign that reads something like "Smile! You're on camera." This is really useful for preventing shoplifting, as well as identifying shop lifters. Even some of the small "mom and pop" local stores will do this because they simply cannot watch every customer in the store.
    Last edited by I<3Liberty; 07-16-2013 at 07:31 PM.

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by I<3Liberty View Post
    The creepy part is the fact that they did not inform customers. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this if they put some sort of sign up or something. A lot of the boutiques and stores I shop at will have a sign that reads something like "Smile! You're on camera." This is really useful for preventing shoplifting, as well as identifying shop lifters. Even some of the small "mom and pop" local stores will do this because they simply cannot watch every customer in the store.
    Like this?

    But when Nordstrom posted a sign telling customers it was tracking them, shoppers were unnerved.
    “We did hear some complaints,” said Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman for the store. Nordstrom ended the experiment in May, she said, in part because of the comments.

  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Like this?
    Yes, later on they did post a sign, but I meant it should have been up from the beginning of the experiment. Customers should always be informed when their privacy is violated. I wouldn't have minded. I actually feel like these kinds of experiments are a waste of time because the important things you'd need to know about your customers can be gathered with far less trouble.

    I worked at a small boutique and we gathered the most useful information just by looking at the leftover inventory. If you consistency have a certain size leftover -- purchase less of it. If you constantly have customer requesting a size 7 shoe or XS jacket -- you order more of it for the next season. Hiring a consultant or conducting a somewhat creepy over-the-top experiment isn't really necessary.

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