Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers

Re:Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers by eunoia on Friday June 14, 2019 @02:13PM (#20185251)

> If devices using iOS 13 start broadcasting a constantly changing bluetooth ID

They've always done this. I think you have your threat model inverted. Beacons aren't tracking phones around stores.

3rd party SDKs installed in apps are tracking user's indoor location via beacon triangulation and uploading that data. A subtle, but important difference.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers by r00fus on Friday June 14, 2019 @02:34PM (#20185446)

Shouldn't Apple ban apps using those SDKs? Is it identifiable from a source scan or binary trawl?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers by dpkonofa on Friday June 14, 2019 @05:20PM (#20186757)

The issue is that there are legitimate uses for this type of code, though. For example, I have my home set up with tons of automations that change, for example, the color of the lights when I'm in the kitchen vs. when my wife is in the kitchen. She prefers warm lighting and I prefer the daytime lighting. It's the same technology, it's just being misused in these commercial instances, in my opinion. People don't actually know that they're agreeing to this type of usage.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers by eunoia on Friday June 14, 2019 @02:37PM (#20185479)

I think so, seems to be the logical progression of their crackdown on particularly egregious 3rd party analytics implementations.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Retail stores use Bluetooth beacons to track customers by graeme on Friday June 14, 2019 @06:26PM (#20187164)

In ios 13 they added bluetooth and wifi access as privacy toggles. Does this prevent this sort of tracking by apps if turned off?

[ Parent | on HN ]