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If they were interested in my location they could request location data. What are the odds they are doing this to directly market products to people based on health data?
Inb4 “They already do that based on what you regularly purchase”
Of course, yes they do. This appears to be one more layer on top of it. And surely they wouldn’t share that information with the pharmacy, right?
They want to use your gyroscope to synchronize your movement within the store with their mapping of what products are on which shelves.
Historically this has been done by offering free in-store Wi-Fi and then triangulating the movement of cell phones within the store based on their signal strength from the perspective of the various Wi-Fi access point supporting the store's network, but a gyroscope will even tell them if you crouch down or turn around.
That sounds pretty plausible I’ll give you that, and strictly speaking in iOS if they were gathering BMI and that type of data it would come up as a request for “Health”
So with that said to purpose would this information serve them given the way you described it? And is there any guarantee that it wouldn’t also be used to further build their marketing profile? Not trying to be argumentative, you have me genuinely curious now.
Nah, fuck em. Even the less sophisticated Wi-Fi approach is skeevy as fuck. I should just trust that the will only do what they say when given more than they need? Absolutely not. They might, but I wouldn't rely on it.
You know, I almost thought for a minute there was going to be a chance there was something cool behind it, like, “it can guide you to the exact location of a product that you’re looking for with x,y,z precision such as how AirTags work” or, “they look at data to optimize placement of items in the store to make it easier for people to find things efficiently” but it’s actually just another degree of shittyness. That stinks.
yeh that's typically not how stores work. they want you in there as long as possible so you buy more stuff. (which is why the milk is in the back)
hardware stores usually have the aisle number on their website beforehand but it's still up to you to find the most efficient route through the store inbetween your purchases.
At least where I've lived, Home Depot's interiors are mapped out on Google Maps. I've always appreciated that.
but can you go online and make a shopping list and it will route you through the store? some stores tried that but it was too efficient for the customer
Well, not exactly. There's no GPS equivalent to my knowledge. However, you can get an aisle and even bay number for a product from the website and use that to manually navigate to exactly the area you need. If I know what item I want in advance, I never spend more than a few minutes shopping in a Home Depot (and I think Lowe's does the same) as opposed to other shops with less efficient guidance.
It does seem very efficient, but could certainly be better.
Sorry to dissappoint.
As for purpose, it is just a higher fidelity, deeper hook into measuring you as a consumer.
I wish we had away to set up devices so they never need the WiFi handshake paradigm. Something like rolling code encryption for home and desired connection points while the device and home access point drop all that are not in sync and masquerade as a thousand others.
Not that it would make a difference when the hardware for the SoC and modem are undocumented, untrusted, and user space info is irrelevant to the actual hardware function. We can't even turn off our devices any more in the Orwellian dystopia Osama bin Laden used to win the fight against freedom, liberty, and democracy.
Both wifi and Bluetooth has better anonymity options now via randomized client IDs, etc, but yeah I'd also like to see even better protocols.
Instead of just using antenna arrays for MIMO to maximize throughput you could instead use the arrays to reduce the signal strength for most traffic below the noise floor (like GPS) to make tracking much much harder. But it does add a lot of complexity too, and would probably be bad for batteries (the receiving end needs more power).
Is turning off WiFi sufficient in Android to stop my phone's scanning attempts?
The relevant permissions for these kinds of apps can still trigger background scans for wifi and Bluetooth even when turned off (except in airplane mode). You have to deny the permission to access location, etc, to prevent that.
Bluetooth as well, even if you don't connect, you're showing up as a ping.
Easy to tie that to your rewards card at checkout, then they know who the Bluetooth signal belongs too.