Comments on: San Francisco Coffee Shop Says They Will Stop Scanning And Tracking Wireless Devices Of Patrons And Passers-By

By: Forthright

Forthright — Fri, 30 May 2014 17:18:00 +0000

Strange that someone would let his business become such a tool for the CyberTrackers, unless there was some major $$ involved…

By: Forthright

Forthright — Fri, 30 May 2014 17:11:00 +0000

Keep telling yourself that….

By: swagv

swagv — Fri, 30 May 2014 01:17:00 +0000

Philz customers are all sheep anyway. I don’t see the problem.

By: Stephan Zielinski

Stephan Zielinski — Fri, 30 May 2014 01:06:00 +0000

Look into a plug-in called Ghostery. On this page, it identified twelve trackers, and blocked the eleven of the twelve I see no reason to allow to run code on my machine. (The twelfth being Disqus.)

By: sfsoma

sfsoma — Thu, 29 May 2014 23:11:00 +0000

Most of the customers I’ve observed at Philz use electronic payment. The advertisers know that you specifically had a certain drink at a certain time on a certain day. Why worry about anonymous collection here while it is everywhere one goes now? This is nothing but media pandering for clicks.

By: Violet Blue ®

Violet Blue ® — Thu, 29 May 2014 21:41:00 +0000

I’m a Philz fan too (from back when Phil was serving coffee out of his 24th Street corner store). I just don’t think whoever made this decision understood the questions it raises or thought about how customers would react, from knee-jerk to well-versed. I think businesses need to know what they’re getting into, and what they’re getting their customers into, and I worry that companies like Palantir, Facebook etc. take advantage of the knowledge gap to get “theirs”. Customers can’t opt-out or refuse Euclid’s tracking, even by choosing not to physically go into a place of business that uses Euclid, and that’s a problem. On a site like SFA, we have a reasonable expectation of behavior and can at least refuse when we use tools like Do Not Track.

Why Philz? I think you answered your own question. It’s low-hanging fruit. Perfect for testing and development because it’s small and local, with a strong relationship already in place with Euclid/Palantir. It’s a natural fit for an industry that has been testing and developing IRL B2B tracking data analytics across the US for years. I spoke with VC’s backing B2B facial recognition apps after I wrote this http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/san-francisco-hates-your-startup-scenetap/1326 and learned quite a bit. The only thing that’s unclear to me is what Philz was really going to get from it.

And maybe you misunderstood: it’s not an FB check-in, it’s a forced login. Sure, customers can choose not to use the wifi. But it’s not clear at all to ordinary customers that this is the only way to “opt out” of FB sniffing your mobile browser data, habits (and when does that cookie expire?) just to use the wifi in your local cafe.

Thanks for the great discussion.

By: thingsthings

thingsthings — Thu, 29 May 2014 21:10:00 +0000

And no. I do not work at Philz. I live near one in SF and like all the employees. I’d hate for my neighbors to lose their jobs from something this.

By: thingsthings

thingsthings — Thu, 29 May 2014 21:05:00 +0000

I hear your point. Mine is, why Philz? They are a relatively small, local business. Hence, low-hanging fruit.

Every wi-fi network you join is privy to your activity. On a higher level, so is your ISP and the other telecoms like Level3. Just do a traceroute and you’ll see.

RE FB. They use it for marketing, of course. I’m sure having customers ‘check-in’ to FB has generated a lot of business for them. You can opt-out. Plus nothing is free. At least they’re explicit about it.

By: Diane Feinstein

Diane Feinstein — Thu, 29 May 2014 20:54:00 +0000

$20 coffee nuts == copper foil hatted nuts

By: Violet Blue ®

Violet Blue ® — Thu, 29 May 2014 20:11:00 +0000

I’ll believe it when I see it. And I really want to believe that Philz doesn’t understand what’s happening here.

It’s not just that Facebook set up infrastructure in Philz’s stores. As one friend pointed out to me, Philz Palo Alto store converted their wifi to a forced Facebook sign-in, blocking Apple’s wifi login dialogue. That’s a sneaky way of giving Facebook data; the goal is to get a Facebook cookie into your mobile device’s primary browser.

This friend also pointed out that Palantir hosts a public Philz at Forest Ave., “and Palantir/Euclid share VCs, recruiters, etc.”

To me, this story is far from over.

Finally, this is not a knee-jerk reaction by a few people, it’s a genuine feeling of fear felt by many. Go look at the anger Philz got on Twitter after the first Appeal story ran. A little bit of informed consent would have gone a long way.