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A bit tangential but here's another reason to disable wifi: even if you don't join a wifi network your phone can be tracked via the packets that it sends out to
by jitix 9y ago
A bit tangential but here's another reason to disable wifi: even if you don't join a wifi network your phone can be tracked via the packets that it sends out to find wifi networks. That can be used is triangulate people's location within closed spaces like department stores. Source: I work at a company where we sell this tech to department stores and such. We are still not allowed to join that data with our shadow profiles of the users but that might happen in the future.
I've become extremely privacy oriented ever since I started working here and saw how creepily companies track users.
- trendia 9y agoDoes this data really provide a monetary benefit to companies?
- losteric 9y agoOf course. eg it can be used to measure how people are influenced by a clothing display, what brands/seasons they're looking for, the effectiveness of different "Sale!" signs, which products are dead inventory wasting floorspace, etc On the other hand, personally I would immediately stop shopping at stores that spied on customers like that.
- jitix 9y agoThe devices are quite inconspicuous and the company has other competitors doing similar things so I stopped having my wifi and Bluetooth on except I know I want to use them. But there's tech being developed that can use cell signals as well but as I understand it's more difficult to read those packets.
- jitix 9y agoThe stores can see correlations between products and how many people do "window shopping" in a section. Basically it's being marketed as giving e-commerce type insights into customer behavior for brick and mortar stores. But the tech can be used in many other scenarios.
- guelo 9y agoI don't really get the concern. Retailers also install video cameras and track everywhere you go in their stores.
- squarefoot 9y agoInstalling cameras to discourage/punish theft is different from using them to learn people habits and use that information either to make money or to gain advantage against someone.
- guelo 9y agoCameras are also used for analytics. And they're way more accurate than wifi scan triangulation.
- fish_fan 9y agoYea but cameras won't show them what you bought last week, your credit, your social network, your criminal records. Man the possibilities for fascism only get more and more exciting for future dictators.
- jefftk 9y agoFacial recognition is getting better; cameras may well be enough to do this soon.
- kogepathic 9y ago> Source: I work at a company where we sell this tech to department stores and such. Are you based in Germany? I interviewed at a German company doing exactly that.
- kuschku 9y agoThis is interesting, can you name the company? I’d like to report them to the Landes- and Bundesbeauftragen für Datenschutz. Collecting this data requires specific opt-in, and the user can not give that by entering a store, but only if they sign a form, or agree with a specific checkbox in an app. Due to that, I’d assume this would end up in court. Please provide an anonymous tip to the Landesbeauftragten für Datenschutz in your state. Alternatively, send it to the https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/ https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/ (they’re responsible for SH, but properly deal with PGP encrypted email, and can redirect them to the responsible agencies)
- jff 9y agoNot tangential, they call this out in section 2.1 of the paper. I'd paste it but the formatting does not copy/paste well.
- askvictor 9y agoWhy does the phone need to send packets to discover WiFi networks? Can't it do this receive only?
- jonnytran 9y agoThat is a good question. According to this presentation titled "Wi-Fi told me everything about you" [1], active discovery uses less power, so it's preferred over passive discovery. Can anyone else here explain why? 1: http://confiance-numerique.clermont-universite.fr/Slides/M-Cunche-2014.pdf http://confiance-numerique.clermont-universite.fr/Slides/M-C...