Shopping Centers Track Customers Via Cell Phone Signals 317
oschobero writes "According an article from the Times, customers in shopping centers are having their every move tracked. Using cellphone signals, the system can tell when people enter the center, how long they stay in a particular shop, and what route each customer takes. The system works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation." The particular tracking device described by the article is made by an English company called Path Intelligence.
Hello John Anderton (Score:4, Interesting)
How did you like the last ad greeting you by name, John Anderton?
warning sigs at doors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unauthorized signal reception (Score:3, Interesting)
And to my knowledge, digital cell phone calls are encrypted. Since there is very little of the analog network remaining, that means that essentially all of them are encrypted. It may not be the best, but it is encrypted.
Re:warning sigs at doors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:People WANT this stuff, they just don't know it (Score:2, Interesting)
If data mining progresses enough, pretty soon advertisements will only appear to those people receptive to such advertisements. So people will find advertising in general a good thing... good enough to be worth trading away your privacy? Probably not for most Slashdotters, but probably so for the average mall rat.
prepare for legal action? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course if ALL the cellphone companies have giving their blessings to recieve their frequencies then the legal threat is reduced, somehow from reading about their tech they dont have permssion.
i presume they have lawyers?, even a ham radio operator could tell you the laws on reception of signals, bottom line no permission, no reception or usage in any way at ALL
Catching unwanted customers (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm sure we've all been there before, where a store ask you to leave. I remember an incident at Radio Shack (when they still existed). I bought a Sony Discman that didn't work. Anyways I was being persistent to get something done. They called mall security and I was kicked out and told not to come back to said mall. Although I was back the next day, my secondary school was connected to said mall.
With this system, I could see them locking on to one's mobiles signal, and then placing it in a database so they would be alerted if one were to return to a mall they were not welcome to. Although if one was smart and figured out they were using mobile signal to track you then all you have to do is turn the mobile off.
Re:Turn off the phone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Although, obviously the stores themselves wouldnt do this, but once this gets more publicity, or more adoption from other stores, there might be some sort of Anti-Tracking organization that will do it...
"This Store Doesn't Track You"
I don't own a cell phone, and probably never will (by choice), but as anti-tracking as I am, this is the least of my worries, infact if it was "open" it could really be benificial in some cases...
"Excuse me, I left something somewhere in this mall, my Cell Phone ID# is 8675309, could you give me a map of where I was today?"
or...
"I can't find my kid, but she has a cell phone, its ID# is 1337K1D, where are they?"
But, alas, the drawbacks far outweigh the benifits as far as im concerned.
Why this isn't likely to apply in the US (Score:2, Interesting)
In the US, they'd have to be decoding three to six different protocols on at least three frequency bands. Those nodes would cost a fortune. You'd have want that location information pretty badly to fund something like that. Not to mention multipath issues.
I know it would work in theory, but something tells me this company isn't tracking *all* handsets in a large mall. Of course, you'd only find that out once you pay for their reports...
Pure BS! (Score:2, Interesting)
This can only be achieved using monitoring software IN the cell phone, using network monitoring (a big subject).
I don't know what they are monitoring, but for sure, it is not GSM phones.
Re:Turn off the phone? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was told that it's good for 50 meters.
Re:Walk randomly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Step 1: Buy pouch (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1305 [dealextreme.com] $2.85 at the time of writing w/free shipping!)
Step 2: Put phone in pouch before entering mall
Step 3: Take phone out of pouch periodically to check text messages/make calls.
Step 4: Confuse system by having phone randomly appear for short intervals around the mall.
Step 5: ???
Step 6: Profit!
Re:Who are they fooling? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Turn off the phone? (Score:3, Interesting)
neither of these features can be done by the mall system, since it is illegal to put a microwave broadcast device in the spectrum used by cell phones in a market without having a contract to do so. So therefor, they cannot in a mall turn on your phone to track your movement if it is turned off, Unless the system is Owned by your service provider, and they are 'leasing' the data collected to the malls, and thus are able to remotely activate said phones.
i don't think service providers would willing to sell the ability to turn an off phone on, which is a reserved feature for emergency location, for the low price that malls would be willing to pay for such data, so as such they're going to simply buy devices that can detect and identify customers and their movement data, by the cellphones people 'leave in the on position' opting out in this case, is to turn off your phone before you get to the parking lot.
Re:Walk randomly. (Score:4, Interesting)
leaving your phone on in said pouch will turn it to 'high power transmit mode' which will kill the typical cell phones battery within an hour.
maybe you can disable this power draining feature in some phones, but i have not yet figured out how on my own phone.
BTW the best way to test your phone for if 'high power' mode is on is to stick it in a microwave oven, if it still gets bars after a minute, it's automatically going to 'high power mode' and yes, microwave ovens don't stop much microwave energy, they are considered safe, because people in the airforce have for years been standing much much closer to much much more powerful microwave generators for many hours at a time... in fact i've read that the first discovery of microwave energy for cooking was an accidentally melted chocolate bar, then intentionally popped popcorn, and finally an egg, which exploded.
Re:Pure BS! (Score:2, Interesting)
There's lot of work about cell id identification, triangulation, footprint based positioning and so, but unless they have some software in the phone, they will not have accurate data to track anything.
Triangulation inside buildings is a nightmare. Each building is a different case study. You must make extensive propagation studies because reflection in walls and people moving create extensive interference that makes the location prediction hard. I've made a paper on indoor location, and I have a demo video to demonstrate the footprint location concept in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM2SLbUKF8E [youtube.com]
If they are sniffing bursts from the MS, that is borderline illegal and the accuracies are not what they claim, at all. They may be able to check the store they are, but unless they force in some way the MS broadcasting, like lots of pico cells in the mall, in order to force lots of handovers (operators don't like this) to get RF power readings, they only will have a little fraction of the costumer track.
They claim big thing, but show little. And cell phone positioning is not GPS... there's a lot of FUD about this mater.
Re:Walk randomly. (Score:1, Interesting)
The only thing you probably have to worry about is heat. Standing in front of an activated attack radar can be warm. You always step down the power on your 500 kW Am stations when a worker is near the main beam. An unshielded cooking microwave wouldn't be much problem unless the dissipating stuff (prevents hot spots) fails. Then you get your 1100 watts in a straight line in some random direction.
Anyway, it's more efficient to redirect those microwaves back towards the food you're cooking than to let it escape. Again, paranoia of invisible energy causes overlegislation of safety. Imagine!
Re:it's not unnecessary (Score:4, Interesting)
You clearly have no idea of the technology involved, do you?
The phone only needs to wake up long enough to send one packet to some towers, then turn off. This is especially true in GSM-land; while Sprint and Verizon were able to specify phones with GPS in order to satisfy E911, this didn't really fly for the GSM providers, so they use TDOA - Timed Difference of Arrival. It works like GPS in reverse; the time it takes for the packet to travel from your phone to the towers is measured, at least two signals are compared and a little "magic" (we now call it "signals processing") thrown in, and they can get a pretty good fix.
All your phone has to do is wake up for a couple of seconds every minute and fire off a single ping, and that information can be used to track you. I know this technology is already in common use among GSM providers in the US; not sure about the other guys.
The ONLY reason that cellphones can't be used in the air is the havoc it would wreak on the cell network.
A good compromise (Score:2, Interesting)
This will allow you to use your cell phone while in the mall without giving them any really useful tracking information.
Use the cell phone in only one place, near the mall entrance. Turn it off as you leave the mall entrance area. They can tell that a cell phone ID 31784908 came into the mall at X time, was in the entrance at Y and Z times, and left at W time. If you're paranoid (I don't blame you) they could link the cell phone ID to your name through the service provider and tell that YOU were in the mall at these times, which is still a lot better than giving away a detailed map of your shopping activities.
Get used to using your cell phone's radio judiciously in the future. Software plugins to allow the radio to be disabled on command, and give some sort of warning signal when it's on, might be a popular modification.