15 ms·
Density.io
- jofer 13y agoNow that's cool! If anyone knows or can say: What physical principle(s) is the sensor operating on? There doesn't seem to be much information on that (possibly deliberately).
- pron 13y agoMy guess is that it's counting cellphones (based on some RF signature). It probably fingerprints the phones, too, because they claim they can track people across different businesses.
- jordanmessina 13y agoHere's a video of a recent pitch where we explain the technology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA#t=4198s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA#t=4198s We're working on more than just wifi as well.
- pron 13y agoSo it only counts people that count ;) Just kidding witchya – best of luck!
- chrisfarms 13y agoRisky. MAC address tracking is definitely a legal 'grey area' at the moment. I can imagine mining/fingerprinting in this way could easily become illegal in the not-to-distant future. In the UK, City of London already banned the wifi-enabled bins that were tracking MAC addresses. It would be really easy to tie a name to MAC address (from point of purchase with a credit card), then see exactly where that person went via the 'sharing' of data with other retailers. This is certainly something you would expect to need 'opt in' to.
- alexandros 13y agoThey didn't really "ban" anything. They just instructed the company that was hosting them to stop doing so, in the face of a media shitstorm. And since that company was also a licensee of the City, they saw it fit to do as told. A shop owner in the City can still do as they like. [source: I was doing other work for the bin company (renew) and saw the whole car crash from the inside]
- chrisfarms 13y agoYou are of course quite right. It wasn't a ban in any legal sense. Though I do think it highlights that the method is already frowned upon... and as and when the public becomes more aware of the fact they are walking around broadcasting their location there will be more pressure to restrict the collection of the data. That said. CCTV does not appear to be going anywhere, and there is very little difference between processing video footage to track people and tracking a MAC address. The only difference in this particular case is that 'sharing' of the data between retailers is touted as a feature (which of course it is).
- shiftpgdn 13y agoCity of Houston does MAC address tracking on the freeways and surface streets to power their traffic tracking measures. It's probably used in hundreds of other places you haven't thought about. If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/ http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/
- parennoob 13y ago> If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off. No, you shouldn't have to turn off a very commonly used service so that people can do better business by tracking it in an intrusive manner. Privacy should be the default option in such programs. If the city used a ton of cameras + facial recognition to track you and your car everywhere and then sold that data to companies so they could optimize for whatever meaningless metric, would you still be as casual about this, and go "Oh, you should just cover your face and walk everywhere if you expect privacy."?
- Xorlev 13y agoWhere's their opt out?
- jordanmessina 13y agoSince we haven't officially launched yet we hadn't posted our official opt out form. Definitely an oversight on our part, wanted to get you something as soon as possible: https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/ https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/ We're adding it to the site now.
- adregan 13y agoI guess you always have the option of turning off wifi.
- icebraining 13y ago"We're working on more than just wifi as well."
- pjc50 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher
- albertsun 13y agoThis is a privacy nightmare. Perhaps wifi devices should no longer provide constant MAC addresses....
- chrisfarms 13y agoOr rename "Airplane mode" to "Shopping mode"
- teleclimber 13y agoSeriously. I'm thinking it's time I set up my phone to turn off wifi whenever I am away from home. But would that even be the end of it? With Wifi off the phone is still broadcasting on cellular channels. Could a device be built that listened to those signals and uniquely identify them?
- paulgb 13y agoWhat's the advantage to a constant MAC address anyway? There must be a reason for it, but my first reaction to this article was to see if I could change mine.
- aroch 13y agoNetwork's that whitelist devices by MAC and device registration/provisioning by MAC. And debugging network is theoretically easier when every device has a unique MAC. There are several applications for OSX and various *nix distros that run at boot and randomize MACs. SpoofMac is probably the most well known: https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC
- MAGZine 13y agoThis is perfect--I'm definitely going to set this up. I'd just like a background service for my Android device that would also randomize my MAC address... (perhaps it's time to investigate android development :P)
- highace 13y agoThis is really clever. So it's like Google Analytics (or any analytics) for your brick and mortar business. This is the kind of stuff I love to read about and see being developed, it makes a refreshing change from yet another javascript framework or social network for your pets.
- paulgb 13y agoThey're not the first; Path Intelligence tried it in 2007: http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/14/path-intelligence-monitors-foot-traffic-in-retail-stores-by-pinging-peoples-phones/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/14/path-intelligence-monitors-...
- allan_ 13y agoare .io domains still so hipster, that you just drop em somewhere and people klick on it?
- CSDude 13y agoIn this flat, rectangular world, I have liked your flat, but curvy rectangles in common card UI.
- soithrewitaway 13y agoBefore you say more, check euclidanalytics.com. The creator of Google Analytics has been working on this, with funding, for a number of years already. I had seen news about this recently and am surprised that more people didn't notice how it is essentially the same, without funding, and less developed.
- jroes 13y agoI've actually seen a crude version of something like this on a trip to Taiwan a couple of years ago. I was at a mall and I noticed a wifi network called "People Counter." I wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with it, but I assumed it was counting MAC addresses.
- skrowl 13y agoWhy are posts allowed that just have the site's URL as the entire post title?
- dangrossman 13y agoThe post title is the same as the page title, which is what you're expected to submit.
- sp0rk 13y agoI imagine HN would just scrape the title automatically if that's the low standard that's been set for headlines here. The "title" field is presumably there so that people can enter something more descriptive.
- tomasien 13y agoMet these this last week, they're absolutely incredible and they understand their market really well. They take privacy incredibly seriously and they've built a product that can change the industry.
- uptown 13y ago"They take privacy incredibly seriously" What does that even mean? They're tracking not only the number of people in a location, but where they go ... then sharing that with their customers. From their own website: Understand your business in the context of others: 1. Who you share customers with. 2. Where else your loyal customers love to go. 3. Where foot traffic in the city is trending. How is that respecting my privacy?
- jordanmessina 13y agoDefinitely understand your concerns. In the system you're an anonymous datapoint. The information can't be used to determine who a specific individual is.
- icebraining 13y ago"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable." — Personal Privacy in an Information Society U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977 http://epic.org/privacy/ppsc1977report/ http://epic.org/privacy/ppsc1977report/ -- In your system, I'm just an anonymous flow of movements. In the shops billing system, I'm just a CC number and a set of purchases. For the billing provider, I'm just a name and address tied to a CC number. And then with a couple of small leaps, suddenly my whole life is compiled on a single page detailing every breath I take.
- uptown 13y agoSo if a shop signs up for the service, and on Monday morning they have one customer who comes into the shop and buys something ... then that customer goes to another shop and just browses. You'll likely have the name of the person because they paid by credit card. You'll also have the information that this customer went down the block to some other shop. And you'll know which customer it was because you only had one customer that day. So tell me again how I can't use this information to identify who a specific individual is.
- warrenmiller 13y agosounds very similar to this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 which was shut down.
- icebraining 13y agoIt might be different since those were in public places, and not in shops.
- Sprint 13y agoHow are you going to restrain the signals to inside the shop?
- Robin_Message 13y agoThis idea is cool, but there are some issues with their privacy claim. They say they are hashing the MAC address (presumably on the device). However, they can't be salting the hash (else they wouldn't be able to match across different stores). Since there is no salt (or a fixed salt), it is trivial to de-anonymise a specific MAC address (just hash it and see if any server has it). Worse, there are only 46 bits that are variable in a MAC address, and there is structure in there (3 bytes manufacturer, 3 bytes serial), so a complete mapping from MACs to the hashed MAC is very doable. A secret per-device key for a HMAC would preserve privacy much better, but would stop them doing the cool stuff they plan — the usual trade off.
- silvertonia 13y agowhy not salt and store the salt with the hash?
- Robin_Message 13y agoThat seems like it would work, but it turns into a "open using crowbar found inside" problem: how do I know to use the same salt on a second density.io device unless I have already matched the MAC address.
- billyhoffman 13y agoThe whole point is the customers in your store have nothing on there phones. Their device simply sucking down the MAC that is broadcast. They are going to get the unprotected MAC.
- albertsun 13y agoThere's no point in trying to assess any privacy claims they make — it's not a technological thing. The only value they offer is violating people's privacy.
- MPetitt 13y ago> The only value they offer is violating people's privacy. I don't think reading a value being freely broadcast by a person in your building is an invasion of privacy, how is this any different from having security cameras with audio or anything else. Saying you have privacy to something you are broadcasting in public, even more specifically in this case a privately owned building is a little daft. Do you think it's an invasion of privacy if someone writes down your name and address if you were yelling it in the middle of a Starbucks?
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoThis is creepy. I will actively avoid stores that use this.
- icebraining 13y agoHow will you know?
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoI guess I have to start looking towards outlets. I wonder if there is any other way to 'protect' yourself?
- ZoF 13y agoSpoof your MAC address, use airplane mode, there's other ways I'm sure. Agreed, this seems invasive and I dislike it.
- maxerickson 13y agoLeave your electronics in the car? (or some similar strategy if that still seems risky) But then you have to start worrying about facial recognition.
- jordanmessina 13y agoWe have stickers for stores to put on their doors so you know if they're using Density. We don't want to be sneaky about this.
- JackC 13y agoStores will have a strong incentive not to advertise that they're using your service, as Nordstrom found out. Will you be doing anything to check whether stores post the stickers properly? Will you terminate service if they don't? Euclid Analytics keeps their customers secret, so if a store doesn't post notices, there's no way for us to know they're using the service. Will you be keeping your customers secret as well?
- agentultra 13y agoHas there been any work on developing and commercializing personal RF "firewalls?" I'd buy one in an instant to block intrusive tech like this.
- buro9 13y agoHave you seen the Off Pocket? https://offpocket.com/ https://offpocket.com/ Though in the UK I have unlimited 4G for £20 per month, so I just leave WiFi permanently disabled.
- porker 13y agoIs Off Pocket any different to putting your phone in airplane mode every time you put it in your pocket? It's certainly more convenient, but also harder on the battery life as the phone continues to search for a signal.
- samstave 13y agoNeed an off pcket with an NFC tag in it that shuts the phone down whilst in proximity. When the tag goes away, the radios awaken...
- buro9 13y agoBattery life was talked about on the original Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offpocket/off-pocket https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offpocket/off-pocket I never ordered one as I missed the window of opportunity. But it was claimed by the creator and users that battery life was variable depending on the make and model of your phone, and whether you had lots of background apps attempting to do things. The claim was that in some combinations you get better battery life by using Off Pocket, and with others you get worse. Phones don't drain greatly when they don't have a signal. A day riding the tube system between meetings in London doesn't significantly affect my battery life, so I've no reason to believe that Off Pocket would've resulted in a different outcome.
- untog 13y agoI was under the impression they were not entirely legal. I recall a movie theater saying they were going to install a 'deadzone' only to find out they weren't able to.
- pfraze 13y agoGreat execution, completely unethical
- reddit_clone 13y agoLooks like I need to turn off WiFi (or Airplane Mode) when I leave home. People need to know about this and it should be an opt in! This is why we can't have nice things.
- jayvanguard 13y agoDefinitely creepy.
- thefreeman 13y agoIf you have Wifi disabled on your device will they still be able to pull your MAC?
- droob 13y agoDon't surveil your customers. It's creepy.
- adamio 13y agoMost businesses have video cameras
- reddit_clone 13y agoWell at least the cameras have stated purpose of preventing theft and possibly solving crimes. Also Cameras are fairly visible. This tech is stealthy and most people won't have any idea that this is actually happening.
- 80 13y agoI wonder if the market for 'dumbphones' will increase as/if this sort of thing becomes more common? Probably not, but it's fun to think about. I know Nokia are still making bare-bones, extra-long-life models aimed at developing countries (eg the 105, 220).
- deutronium 13y agoInteresting idea, but wouldn't you get better coverage of people using GSM addresses, rather than Wifi MAC addresses? Also it could be rather easily tricked by competitors, by constantly switching the MAC address.
- rokhayakebe 13y agoTo everyone screaming about privacy, RELAX, this is opt-in.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- finnn 13y agoWhere does it say that? And how long until it's not?
- _derko 13y agohttps://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/ https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/
- rokhayakebe 13y agoI watched their LAUNCH video where the founder states this.
- finnn 13y agoAh okay. (I was on a mobile connection, didnt wanna load the vid).
- holgersindbaek 13y agoAwesome product.
- mrfusion 13y agoI'm seeing people talking about MAC address issues. But how does this device work exactly? Is every phone throwing around a mac address, even if it's not trying to connect to wifi? For example I have my phone set to use 3G expect on my home network. Would I count?
- dublinben 13y agoIf wifi is enabled, your device is still constantly searching for your home AP. That reveals your MAC address.
- cr3ative 13y agoI'm making an assumption about your phone, but it is probably broadcasting packets every now and then saying "Hello, is mrfusion's home network in range?" - and that packet has your MAC on it, and can be picked up by other devices.
- mrfusion 13y agoCould a device like this use bluetooth instead of wifi / mac address? Or for that matter could it somehow look at cell signals?
- nathos 13y agoEuclid discusses this on their blog: http://blog.euclidelements.com/2013/07/why-wi-fi-is-right-approach-for-retail.html http://blog.euclidelements.com/2013/07/why-wi-fi-is-right-ap...
- mrfusion 13y agoBy the way, I'd love something like this for the gym. I'd like to check if it's too crowded before I decide to go or not. I guess for any kind of business with lines or waiting rooms, (banks, ATMS, restaurants) customers might appreciate a way to quickly gauge the crowd level before going.
- Sprint 13y agoNo need for such a perverted privacy violation, the shop could just install a door step counter like they are commonly used already. Then you would have the information how many people are currently in the store.
- jamiequint 13y agoEveryone here seems to be complaining about the anonymous tracking, which isn't really an issue for "normals". Its a relatively useless complaint too as that data already exists in the credit card network. The real issue with this is that most SMBs are unsophisticated when it comes to the technology stack they use. I saw this firsthand in many ways working at Swipely (swipely.com) as we figured out product market fit. While things like 'see where else your customers shop' might seem like an interesting feature from an outsiders perspective, the businesses don't actually care. They often barely have the bandwidth to worry about their own customers.
- moogleii 13y agoExactly, this is basically a physical manifestation of what google already does with your online presence.
- geuis 13y agoDid I miss something with the video? It plays an interview between pg and Calacanis that's 2 hours long.
- stickydink 13y ago#t=4198s
- legec 13y agoMental note : before your next hold up, remember to turn off your smartphone ...
- Sprint 13y agoTime to build a device that pollutes the databases with useless data.
- nwh 13y agoKeep in mind that these "anonymous" data points aren't. Your phones MAC address exposes your home wifi network thanks to Google's databases. They also expose where you work, where your friends houses are, what your favorite coffee shop is. This is beyond dangerous, it's completely unacceptable.
- tzakrajs 13y agoI am confused where you are linking MAC addresses of phones with MAC addresses of home wireless routers.
- nwh 13y agoYour devices broadcast the names of networks it has seen recently in frequent intervals. "Yo HomeWiFI you there" essentially. Anybody listening can then correlate them with Googles database to find out detailed information about the user. Usually people have a huge list of connected networks which will be announced and give huge information about the user. "MIT" SSID? Probably a student then.
- lunixbochs 13y agoPhones don't simply broadcast a complete list of networks they remember.
- lxa2 13y agoyes they do. http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2013/papers/imc148-barberaSP106.pdf http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2013/papers/imc148-barber...
- timmaah 13y agounacceptable on which end? The coffee shop collecting the info or your phone exposing it?
- nwh 13y ago
- josephlord 13y agoI'm OK with the measuring traffic volumes using this method but I'm uncomfortable with the identifying information being stored without permission. If they provided incentives to install an app/visit a website to register for rewards or be entered into a prize in return for allowing density.io to track you that would be acceptable.
- pbreit 13y agoShouldn't something like Leap Motion be able to do this (for one store at least) and without the privacy concerns?
- ynniv 13y agoI hadn't realized how trackable cell phones were until I was experimenting on a wifi project and saw both MAC addresses and Preferred Network List of devices within the area that had not joined my network. Cell phone wifi is a privacy nightmare. Even the most technical people don't realize this, so projects that popularize it are going to kick up huge amounts of mud. Think of how easy it is to identify "whale" clients, if not by direct tracking, then by revenue correlation (these N people were present for $N,NNN,NNN in revenue events). They're valuable to track because when they show up you want your sales people to be at their best, but a service that starts tracking those people is going to make real enemies quickly.
- simpsond 13y agoWhile I understand the concern about tracking peoples presence with phones, I don't feel like this is new. The cellular companies can track location, and it's already happening.
- slackpad 13y agoAre there any good apps for location-aware WiFi toggling? I rarely use WiFi outside of home or work so I'd like it to turn itself off to avoid stuff like this.
- petercooper 13y agoApparently Nordstrom did an experiment with this for a while - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper... - even going as far as monitoring passing traffic so you could monitor the percentage of people passing who actually come into the store. This could be pretty fascinating in the context of running certain types of window displays, sales/offers, etc, and lead to ecommerce-style split testing and the like. It says they stopped the experiment partly due to people whining though, but I imagine it'll just go 'under the radar' in future since it could be too valuable not to try.
- dgavey 13y agoOk so this system works by tracking MAC addresses. I assume the same sort of system using cameras and facial recognition would work too, and you can't turn off your face. I assume this must be already happening somewhere. The amount of privacy we think we have must be a small fraction of what we actually have.
- plusbryan 13y agoWithout wishing to belittle the privacy concerns of my fellow HNers, I wonder how long it will take for people to just be ok with being tracked in this way? This seems like one of those social changes that feels strange and uncomfortable at first, but over time becomes the accepted norm.
- alexcroox 13y agoIn the same way we are tracked with Cookies across the web, I don't see the difference.
- lloeki 13y agoPeople already have dozen of loyalty cards, and throw their email at every point of sale, which are handled in a centralized way behind the scene by a few actors. Also, people log in with Facebook to basically anything. "it's free" and "get cool rebates" create such an incredible variant of SEP field[0]. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEP_field#Fiction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEP_field#Fiction
- rlx0x 13y agoIt pains me if I see someone describing the slow and gradual installment of the total surveillance world and the loss of any privacy as just something "that feels strange and uncomfortable at first". I for one will never be okay with it! and I know a LOT of people that are against loosing civil liberties too (even if the likes of you don't care!). Ofcourse I know that my smartphone broadcasts its mac/stored-essids every few seconds, thats why I have wifi disabled most of the time. Most people don't realize that, most people also don't realize the tracking capabilities of cookies. Laws in EU have begun to make it illegal to store cookies without the users consent, because even though its technically possible to block cookies, most people have no idea about that. So I can only hope that it will become one day illegal to violate peoples privacy like that!
- chrischen 13y agoCommercial Wifi routers already do retail traffic analysis. https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2013/12/get-a-visual-on-your-black-friday-foot-traffic/ https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2013/12/get-a-visual-on-your-b... So people are probably already being tracked... and no one has noticed.
- circa 13y agomy density has bought me to you
- zbruhnke 13y agoThe funny part to me is that people think this is new. Companies like Euclid have literally been doing this for a couple of years(and quite successfully I might add) http://euclidanalytics.com/ http://euclidanalytics.com/ Not only is it not new, its probably not going away.
- PaulHoule 13y agoI gotta try this out when I'm wearing my wearable Hadoop cluster ;-)
- fiatjaf 13y agoWhat is the percentage of people who always leave wifi enabled? I turn mine off every time I finish using it.
- Schwolop 13y agoFrom their launch conf pitch, they did an experiment in a stadium with an attendance figure of 20000 and found 71% of attendees had a phone with wifi enabled. No idea if that audience is representative, but it seems plausible to me.
- nickporter 13y agoIf you want to build one of these, check out this library: http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy
- fiatjaf 13y agoThanks, I've just asked this in another comment.
- fiatjaf 13y agoWhat do I need to do to build my own version of this device? Can I do it with any router? A Raspberry Pi?
- blargle 13y agohttp://br1.einfach.org/tech/horst/ http://br1.einfach.org/tech/horst/
- telecuda 13y agoAm I correct to assume that the hardware/device piece is similar to a Pineapple (https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/wifi-pineapple https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/wifi-pineapple)? As I understand it, the device is like a WiFi Router looking for nearby clients broadcasting their MAC. Since phones have the ability of turning themselves into WiFi Hotspots, could a phone/app offer this same capability, or is it missing a hardware piece that lives in Density/Pineapple?
- 13throwaway 13y agoDo devices broadcast their MAC adress when looking for an AP? Do devices encytpt their MAC when they are connected to an AP? I want a phone that randomizes the MAC every time it connects to an AP.
- d23 13y agoI thought this was a SaaS for dentistry (somehow) and I was going to be excited since it's been a while since I've gone to the dentist.
- matthewmacleod 13y agoPretty good execution. We recently build something pretty similar for keeping track of who was in our office and where they were (partial write-up here: http://matthewmacleod.co.uk/blog/passive-wifi-tracking.html http://matthewmacleod.co.uk/blog/passive-wifi-tracking.html) - strictly opt-in, but we still had to wrestle with the privacy implications. Problem is, this is a really effective and totally passive system with great benefits. But privacy-wise, it's scary.
- WillKirkby 13y agoAnyone else thinking this looks a bit like Brendan O'Connor's CreepyDOL? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFA6lew2tcE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFA6lew2tcE
- sturmeh 13y agoDensity's worst enemy is this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.pryfi https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.p... :)
- obiefernandez 13y agoPlacemeter offers a substantially similar product that works based on strategically placed small cameras and machine intelligence. It recognizes individuals coming in and out of a retail location based on what they look like. Pretty cool technology and the founders were part of my Techstars class. http://placemeter.com http://placemeter.com