Tag Archives | tracking

How Smartphone Carriers Are Making Money By Tracking Your Behavior

By on May 7, 2013 in News 0

smartphone carriers

A log of vast numbers of individuals’ movements and actions is a burgeoning goldmine for major wireless carriers, the MIT Technology Review writes:

Wireless operators have access to an unprecedented volume of information about users’ real-world activities, but for years these massive data troves were put to little use other than for internal planning and marketing.

This data is under lock and key no more. Under pressure to seek new revenue streams, a growing number of mobile carriers are now carefully mining, packaging, and repurposing their subscriber data to create powerful statistics about how people are moving about in the real world.

In late 2011, Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. carrier, changed its privacy policy so that it could share anonymous and aggregated subscriber data with outside parties. Verizon is working to sell demographics about the people who, for example, attend an event, how they got there or the kinds of apps they use once they arrive.

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How Stores Are Spying On You

By on April 11, 2013 in News 0

Wear a mask, pay cash, and break out your old brick cell phone. Consumer Reports tells all:

High-resolution video cameras monitor all areas in and outside the  store. With facial-recognition software, your mug shot can be captured and digitally filed. Ditto for your car’s license plate. Stores don’t provide sufficient disclosure, so you can’t opt out to protect your privacy.

Gaze trackers are hidden in tiny holes in the shelving and detect which brands you’re looking at and how long for each. There are even mannequins whose eyes are cameras that detect age, sex, ethnicity, and facial expression.

Your mobile phone is an excellent device for tracking your shopping route. Retailer tracking systems can identify individual shoppers by monitoring your phone’s International Mobile Subscriber Identity number (constantly transmitted from all cell phones to their service providers) or Media Access Control address (transmitted when the device’s Wi-Fi is enabled, which is the default setting on most devices).

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Supermarket Giant Uses Wristband Trackers To Monitor Employees’ Every Move

By on March 17, 2013 in News 15

If other corporations follow the example of British mega-chain Tesco, the future of working retail will become increasingly similar to being imprisoned. Via Technoccult:

The former Tesco employee said the device provided an order to collect from the warehouse and a set amount of time to complete it. If workers met that target, they were awarded a 100 per cent score, but that would rise to 200 per cent if they worked twice as quickly. The score would fall if they did not meet the target.

If, however, workers did not log a break when they went to the toilet, the score would be “surprisingly lower”, according to the former staff member, who worked in an Irish branch of Tesco. He said the devices put staff under huge pressure and many of his colleagues using them in Ireland were eastern Europeans, with limited English. Tesco confirmed that the devices were also in use across its UK stores.

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Gates Foundation And Rupert Murdoch Unveil New Database To Track K-12 Students’ Personal Information

By on March 12, 2013 in News 29

Kids’ grades, behavior, medical issues, and more—with their names and social security numbers attached—will be tracked by their public schools, entered in a database, and sold to private companies, in the name of improving educational services, Reuters reports:

The most influential new product [at the SXSWedu conference this week in Austin] may be a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.

In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school – even homework completion.

Local education officials retain legal control over their students’ information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.

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Saudi Arabia Introduces Electronic Tracking Of Women

By on November 24, 2012 in News 11

In Saudi Arabia, Siri tells you everything your wife is doing. Males will automatically receive text message notifications whenever their spouses, relatives, or daughters pass through travel checkpoints, the International Business Times reports:

Saudi Arabia has introduced an electronic tracking system to monitor its female citizens and alert Saudi females’ male guardians to their movement.

Since last week, some Saudi women’s male guardians have been receiving text messages from immigration authorities, alerting them when women under their [control], which include wives and daughters, leave the country. To leave the kingdom, Saudi women are required to seek permission from their male guardians, who give consent by signing what is known as the “yellow sheet” at the airport or border.

The recent controversy caused by the escape of a Saudi woman to Sweden was believed to have prompted the authorities to implement the system, Al Arabiya reported, citing local media.

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