Comments on: Privacy, Legal Concerns Raised As San Francisco Coffee Shop Scans And Tracks Cell Phones Of All Patrons

By: Luciano Fuentes

Luciano Fuentes — Fri, 30 May 2014 02:46:00 +0000

The concerns about Euclid Analytics are certainly valid, even though in practise the methods are largely benign.

The confusion stems from the fact that this is an “inverted” kind of surveillance. Unlike the common fears about GPS stalking (say tracking a device location across a city), MAC address tracking works by logging device activity within a known vicinity (within range of the WIFI transponder).

Unless someone using this method has the capacity to infer identity from your device MAC address, then in practise it is less intrusive than an in-store camera recording your entry. Legitimate fears stem from the possibility that device ID’s can be matched to an identity, or merged/matched with past location data.

Logging device MAC addresses is a practise that’s as old as WiFi. Euclid are not doing anything that would trouble a capable network administrator.

By: sfsoma

sfsoma — Thu, 29 May 2014 23:14:00 +0000

And people buy this over priced coffee because…

By: Notes From Nowhere

Notes From Nowhere — Wed, 28 May 2014 03:38:00 +0000

A long time ago my friend used to work at Philz on 24th st. One day they got an email announcing that the price of coffee would be going up because of gasoline costs or something. The employees were told to remind everyone that their now $3.50 cup of coffee was ‘hand currated.’ My friend asked when the price of labor would rise, since he had worked there for a year without a raise. He did not get a raise and so on his last day, he switched all of the decaf with the regular beans.

I don’t go there much, but this really seals the deal for me. Fuck Philz.

By: Derrick

Derrick — Wed, 28 May 2014 03:24:00 +0000

This is the correct analogy. It’s actually more like someone sitting in front of the store and watching how many people walk down the street screaming “MY NAME IS !” which is what all WiFi devices do. The guy with the clipboard is not even recording the MACs, he’s obfuscating them and aggregating the results.

By: Forthright

Forthright — Wed, 28 May 2014 00:52:00 +0000

Didn’t really need ANOTHER reason not to go there, but will keep that in mind! Ah, silly phone rabbits! Your technology is hastening your hybridization….

By: forizzlybear

forizzlybear — Wed, 28 May 2014 00:16:00 +0000

Jesus H. Not only are we going to make you wait too long for overpriced coffee, we’re gonna tap into your personal devices, whether you come here or not. Good god. I’ll be sure my wifi is off anytime I’m near one of these from here on out.

By: Sbacon1999

Sbacon1999 — Tue, 27 May 2014 20:50:00 +0000

The key is if this data is in aggregate, which Euclid claims. If that is truly the case, then this is no different than someone sitting in front of Philz with a clipboard and tallying how many people walk by, how many go in, how long those that go in stay, etc.

I’m sure some company could do this via heat detection (e.g. body temp to detect a human being) but instead, Euclid is using the ping of a phone to detect a human to do their counting.

As a retailer, this information is really critical to understanding trends, predicting peaks and valleys in business etc. But if you take it to the level of “Man A walks by, we know it’s Joe Smith, and we know Joe buys this, so we’ll offer Joe this to entice him to walk in…” – then you’re getting personal, and in my opinion, creepy. But one person’s creepy is another person’s convenient and relevant, so you could argue this both ways.

Unfortunately it sounds like Jaber was not very well-versed on the technology or on how to talk about it in a way that isn’t creepy 🙁

By: saimin

saimin — Tue, 27 May 2014 17:22:00 +0000

This is why I have my phone set to always disable WiFi when I’m away from home.

By: Fred Condo

Fred Condo — Tue, 27 May 2014 16:04:00 +0000

There is a lot of blame to hand out on the issue of covert tracking. As the EFF says, MAC addresses in phones should be randomized. Jacob Jaber has a responsibility to know what he’s doing in his own stores. But tracking goes much deeper—the SF Appeal website has so many cookies, it could open a bakery. The EFF’s Privacy Badger tool, which was released just a few weeks ago, reports that there are 38 trackers on this article’s page. That’s right: 38 creepy trackers accompany an article about creepy tracking at Philz. And they’re not all benign. The Privacy Badger has already noticed that 3 of them fail to heed the Do Not Track setting. The Badger automatically blocks those. 7 others would be blocked, but provide critical functionality. And of course, just to join the discussion, I had to register with Disqus and allow their 3rd-party cookies.

By: withak30

withak30 — Tue, 27 May 2014 15:57:00 +0000

I bet there are lots of places that do this already but don’t bother to tell you.