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What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In
- Endy 9y agoNot exactly in-depth reporting here, but I wouldn't expect much more of Vogue. In all honesty, I'm not surprised that restaurants you have to make reservations with want to know everything about you before you walk in - our world's economy is all based on personal information; the "customer" is the most valuable product. Heck, if I'm to be perfectly honest, I would not be surprised if there was a restaurant out there that ran reverse image searches on every guest; with the speed of it now and the huge number of images indexed, you can find out more than ever before. However, my takeaway here is pretty simple: avoid booking a reservation over a website. Doubly so if they want private data, and triply on the same account from which you booked another table. Then again, I'm a bit of a nut and I like my private information to stay private.
- dannyw 9y agoTo be fair, some people may like their experiences to be personalised.
- Endy 9y agoThat might be true. Their preference for a personalized experience should not allow the establishment to impact on my privacy. It should be strongly opt-in, not "avoid and never patronize this restaurant to opt-out".
- justboxing 9y agoThis is nothing. A Pizza shop in Oslo was busted back in May for using Facial recognition software on it's customers: > A crashed advertisement reveals the code of the facial recognition system used by a pizza shop in Oslo... Source: https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000 https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000
- dominotw 9y agowhy is this illegal?
- wutbrodo 9y agoI don't think it is. I might have missed it but I don't think anyone in the thread or tweet suggested it was.
- dominotw 9y agooh,I read "busted" as something legal. > Slang Placed under arrest. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/busted http://www.thefreedictionary.com/busted maybe that deosn't apply in this context.
- zdkl 9y agoI believe it's also used in a more colloquial sense to mean someone was caught doing something they shouldn't, even non-illegaly
- justboxing 9y agoYeah, by 'busted' I meant 'got exposed' / 'got caught with their pants down' by the public. Nothing to do with legality of stated act.
- Wingman4l7 9y agoIt might not be, although privacy laws in the EU tend to be stricter than those in the US. "Busted" could simply refer to this practice being outed to customers who might not like it.
- vinay427 9y agoMinor correction: Norway is in the EEA, not in the EU.
- phil21 9y ago
- im3w1l 9y agoThis article sounds pretty extreme. "They've read your biography" to personalize your dining experience? I think very, very few places would bother with something like that. Maybe if you are such a regular that you know all the people there by name, or if you go to a very expensive restaurant where cost is not an issue.
- wutbrodo 9y agoThis is an important point that the title elides: there's still a good amount of manual work required here which means that it's only really worth the effort for fine dining. As the article mentions, they already did things like this with index cards in the past.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kardos 9y agoIt smells like this approach opens up a sort of attack vector. Eg, to wreck someone's experience by getting some false information injected into a target's social media streams in order to be picked up by these information harvesters.
- rubatuga 9y agoBest way to track customers is to provide free wifi. Log the visits by mac addresses, and you can collect huge amounts of valuable data.
- Sephr 9y agoNo need to provide Internet, as most phones broadcast their WiFi MAC addresses to the world, even with the WiFi UI shown as "off".
- yunyu 9y agoRecent Android and iOS versions randomize the MAC when scanning.
- matte_black 9y agoNot even “recent”, I believe this happened a long time ago
- ddeck 9y agoTrue, but in Android's case, the implementation seems to be flawed: In our lab environment we observed that in addition to periodic global MAC addressed probe requests, we were able to force the transmission of additional such probes for all Android devices. First, anytime the user simply turned on the screen, a set of global probe requests were transmitted. An active user, in effect, renders randomization moot, eliminating the privacy countermeasure all together. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/shielding-mac-addresses-from-stalkers-is-hard-android-is-failing-miserably/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/shiel...
- userbinator 9y agoThe only model researchers found to do randomization correctly was the Cat S60 Amusingly enough, that's probably more because of an oversight by the manufacturer (who is probably just copying a reference design) --- they don't bother writing a "fixed MAC" and just leave the NVRAM blank, meaning the device doesn't actually have a MAC and generates a random one every time you turn WiFi on and off. That's how it works on the Mediatek platforms that I'm more familiar with, and you'll find this is the case for a lot of the cheap Chinese unbranded phones. It's irritating when you need to connect to networks using MAC filtering, but I'm almost tempted to respond to all the "my MAC keeps changing" threads on XDA with "that's a feature, not a bug." ;-)
- Animats 9y agoRight now, it's high-end restaurants in New York City doing this. But they did that by hand in the past. The "headwaiter who knows everybody" was a big deal once. The big change will come when this filters down to chain restaurants. Which way will Starbucks go on this? They already have an affinity card and know your WiFi information. "You haven't visited a Starbucks in 72 hours. Are you OK?"
- matte_black 9y agoWhat are examples of some restaurants in New York City that do this, I’d like to try this next time I’m there.
- Animats 9y agoIf you have to ask that, you can't get a reservation.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoStarbucks has been pushing gameified star bonuses and events from my understanding. It effectively does "Hey would you like some stars" on everyones phone. Also they give bonuses and stars for food you don't eat to encourage you to try the other food.
- Negative1 9y agoIt works quite well (at least on me). Responses usually go from "well, I was already feeling like one of those so might as well get some points" to "why would I want a Frappachino when it's so cold out"? I assume their algorithms are under heavy development and are basically random A/B tests at this point, perhaps primed with some basic data and stars added as an enticement. In the future, I could see it evolving into something where it sees what the weather is, looks at what websites I'm visiting (via data brokers), analyzes historical trends, extrapolates my likely mood and finally uses all of this to figure out what sugary comfort drink I'm mostly likely to bite at. Perhaps I should take comfort in how utterly predictable I am and how easily open to suggestion... On a similar note, if you haven't seen it; https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...
- ethan_harris 9y agoI wonder if there could be an interesting ML classifier using information like this. Crawl a customers social media, track their behavior in the restaurant. Surely some interesting patterns will emerge.
- forapurpose 9y agoBe sue to read though to the last paragraph, where the story becomes a bit darker (though not unexpected to HN readers): They’ve read your biography . . . “We have had guests come in and we’ve read their biography and read maybe they had a really rough last year or maybe they lost someone in their life recently,” Meyer says. “That may sound extreme, but all of those pieces of information are going to help us do a better job of customizing the hug when they come in. ..."
- xapata 9y agoDarker?
- protomikron 9y ago> "We know more about our guests than we ever have before—you cannot have enough information. Now we have no excuse not to customize the experience [...]" Maybe some customers do not want a custom experience? There might be advantages, but I guess that some customers pick places because of "the atmosphere, the general food and the waiters there" - so a too targeted experience could also be harmful.
- coddingtonbear 9y agoYour preference for the impression of anonymity has been noted and will be applied to future dining experiences.
- ImSkeptical 9y agoThere are many restaurants that aren't stalking you on social media to figure out what foods you dislike.
- heinrichf 9y agoTo Survive in Tough Times, Restaurants Turn to Data-Mining (August 2017): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/dining/restaurant-software-analytics-data-mining.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/dining/restaurant-softwar...
- bhauer 9y ago> Just like you’ve studied their Instagram feeds for nightly specials, hidden menu items, and the most photogenic cocktail I must be massively out of touch with modern culture, because I've never once done that.
- tritium 9y agoNo, what’s really going on is the franchise vs. mom & pop version of corporate espionage. Normal people with no skin in the game, beyond what’s for lunch, don’t behave this way. There’s a small-ish subculture of afficionados and foodies, but I’ve never met anyone that obsesses over dinner to that degree. Usually it’s a byproduct of a phase they breifly went through, when they were on a kick about something. The rare exception being the occassional young romantic couple, obsessing over the courtship rituals of wooing their hot date. This is less about the food than the date, and again, it’s yet another small-ish subculture, since 90% of everyone is undateable. [0,1] [0] http://www.pkmeco.com/seinfeld/wink.htm http://www.pkmeco.com/seinfeld/wink.htm [1] https://youtu.be/C-a64OwOYqU https://youtu.be/C-a64OwOYqU
- nasredin 9y ago>since 90% of everyone is undateable. [0,1] Non-Seinfield non-Youtube citation needed. --- I have become one of those "Citation needed" people. Argh.
- tritium 9y agoYou wanna see what happens when your kind takes things too far??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_(motorsport) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_(motorsport) > CTRL+F Japan was the birthplace of drifting. (hey, hacker news, fuck your downvotes)
- mlosapio 9y agoBillboards track cars using the RF of the TPMS sensors on your cars and then make inference about who the driver statistically would be ....
- gkya 9y agoNice times when customisation and personalisation were things that the user did. Reading other comments here, I guess we need some ad block software not only on our browsers, but also on our faces.
- robinanil 9y agoDisclosure: I am the Director of Engineering at Tock. We power the reservation system at Eleven Madison Park which Will and Daniel own. The notion of a user's past history with rich data has been something high end restaurants have been trying to manage either via spreadsheets or via custom crm implementations. What we have done is to make that easier through product design and machine intelligence to bring it to more down market restaurants. It unlocks really great experiences for guests, avoids the need to talk about your allergies every time you walk into a restaurant and makes sure it is accurate and upto date.
- chinathrow 9y agoTo get that right, if you're a restaurant using your services: a) you spy on your guests b) you cross reference with other data sets without your guests knowing c) you do this for improved revenue I'll make sure I never eat at restaurants using Tock. Good look seting up proper opt-in once you serve EU guests after May 2018.
- robinanil 9y agoa) unequivocally no! I am not sure what I mentioned caused you to believe that. b)Yes, enriching the data is a key part of our offering but we are very transparent in our data practices and take this job very seriously. https://www.exploretock.com/terms https://www.exploretock.com/terms https://www.exploretock.com/privacy https://www.exploretock.com/privacy c) Improved revenue comes with increased visit and spend, that happens only if the customers get a great experience. The practice of taking notes is something that every restaurant is doing. What we make sure is that they capture only the necessary information. Every customer controls their public information through their profile page and can choose to remove it if needed.
- keiferski 9y agoLots of businesses are looking for ways to do lots of unethical or undesirable things - that doesn’t somehow absolve you of responsibility for enabling them.
- 9y ago
- nehushtan 9y agoIt's going to be like eating at L'Idiot in Steve Martin's LA Story. There was a screen showing tidbits of live data about celebrities as they entered - how much their last film grossed, their sexual orientation, etc. "You think with a financial statement like this you can have the duck?!"