Retailers can now track you across the mall with your phone's Wi-Fi
Source: IT World
... Retail stores will soon be able to follow you around the store – or even outside the store if you just walk by without entering – using the WiFi antenna built into your smartphone.
How would they do it? Pretty simple really. When you come within range of a properly configured WiFi access point, it can record the wireless MAC address of your phone – a unique 12-digit number. Every time you pass by, that AP can log that number. If you enter that store or café every day, it will soon have a detailed record of when you (or at least your phone) entered and departed.
... Like every Web tracker on the planet, Euclid’s privacy policy states that it only collects this information anonymously and in aggregate. It stores the MAC address in a one-way hash, so nobody can go backwards and figure out your actual MAC address. It doesn’t snoop around your phone to collect other information, like your contacts or Web history. And you can opt out of its databases at any time, though the chances of someone going to Euclid’s site to find out whether they’re in those databases is pretty much nil.
But even if Euclid doesn’t know who you are, the store does – the moment you plunk down plastic to buy something. Correlating that purchase with your location (ie, near the register) is probably as simple as matching time stamps between the transaction and the analytics log. And as mobile payments using Near Field Communications chips built into phones becomes more common, that process becomes even simpler.
... And, assuming the retailer stores that data, it can hand it over to any legal authority with the appropriate paperwork.
Read more: http://www.itworld.com/it-management/336828/attention-shoppers-retailers-can-follow-you-around-mall-way-web-trackers-do-onl?page=0,0
= new reply since forum marked as read
