273
This is after forcing login to a store account:
At least they don’t hide in their ToS that:
“l agree to let Walmart monitor my use of Walmart WiFi, including to:
- Determine my presence in Walmart stores
- Associate information about me with my Walmart account
- Improve products and services
- Gather market insights about my in-store purchases and activities”
But that’s not enough, they need to monitor your internet activity further too.
For further reading, some greatest hits (the section headers on Wiki’s Criticism of Walmart):
- Local communities
- Allegations of predatory pricing and supplier issues
- Labor relations
- Poorly run and understaffed stores
- No AEDs in stores (automated external defibrillators)
- Imports and globalization
- Product selection
- Taxes
- Animal welfare
- Midtown Walmart
- Opioids settlement
Nah. Their network their rules. Quit your bitching or use 5g.
It was a worthwhile sacrifice, but I’m definitely gonna name & shame! Wouldn’t touch WiFi if it weren’t a dead zone.
Also gave me a chance to complain about some of their other business practices. (Certainly wouldn’t have shopped there if I hadn’t been asked to this one time.)
I’ve never seen this message before so they seem an outlier even in the greedy corporate world. Enough complaints and every once in a while a business changes their practices. Why not whine a little? 🙂
Every public WiFi is like this. iCloud relay doesn’t work on any airport or airplane WiFi. I need to always turn it off and other ‘hide IP’ settings. I have a Target with a dead zone and I’m sure T&C are the same. I just use it when I need it and don’t auto-connect. Walmart needs precise location to pick up from the app. Sam’s club app needs precise location for checkout form the app. Mcd app needs my precise location to give me deals. I wouldn’t say this is asshole design. Our regulation let them design it this way. I turn off my NextDNS and iCloud relay when I’m having issues and then turn back on. Nothing else you can do about it, apart from not using the WiFi or app, unfortunately.
Not entirely sure if this is possible but I'm increasingly suspicious that they started jamming outside networks within their warehouse. Of course it makes sense that mobile data doesn't really work inside a giant steel warehouse, so perhaps it's just confirmation bias, but I can't seem to recall not having any mobile data signal at all until my last walmart visit.
I used to keep to myself and look up the location of the item I was looking for online. If they want me to bother a floor person for it though, doing that is highly preferable to giving walmart my email to sell along with any information they can extrapolate from my usage of their network.
Jamming is incredibly illegal so I doubt that. They probably just have a bad roof for reception.
Also remember hanlon's razor.
Multiple big-box stores in my area have poor cell reception in-house. I blame the giant metal roof overhead, which is probably acting like some kind of Faraday cage or RF filter.
Lol why is this an opinion? If people want to vpn out of my network I don't give a fuuuuuuuuck. Now if you're raw doggin' that traffic or sucking down the bandwidth don't bitch when I filter or throttle, for sure, but surely you can at least empathize with people wanting to use privacy tools, ya tool.
Would you say the same thing if they intercepted HTTPS connections? Or blocked popular ~~DNS~~ (edit: DNS over HTTPS/TLS) resolvers and required you to use the one advertised in DHCP?
I think if you're going to provide WiFi, just do it and stop spying on me.
The reason they want this is probably so they can tie your Walmart account to your position inside the store. And see which other sites you visit to find a better price, etc.
Yes. Their public network. I have no expectations of any privacy on a public network. This is privacy 101.
You're conflating the individual practice of having a pessimistic threat model with a corporation's entitlement to behave badly.
Of course I assume the worst from Walmart or any other public network — I just think they should have some class and provide a public good to their customers without creepy privacy invasion. Somehow they manage to provide free water in fountains without requiring me to scan my driver's license.
If they published a white paper explaining the Differential Privacy properties of their customer analysis tech, I might revise my opinion.
Dude. End to end encryption. That is network privacy 101.
Exactly. "Hey, we're gonna let you use our network. But if you do anything illegal or shady on our network, we'd be held liable. So we're gonna track what you do on our network to make sure if you do try something, we can remove you from the network and have proof."
I mean, yeah, they're also gonna collect advertising data, but do you really expect to have an expectation of privacy when using someone else's network? Just like they can film you in the building, they can monitor your network traffic on their network.
If this surprises you, maybe you should do some more research on how a network actually works. And get a VPN. And maybe don't connect to random public networks(you don't even want to know what OTHER PEOPLE can do to you on those networks, nevermind the company).
Also, you pay for your cellphone service, right? Are you paying for the wifi in the store? Nooooooo. They're giving it to you for free. Almost like they're offering you something in return for that data monitoring. Like they're offering you a service with a built in method to recoup costs... A service you voluntarily use and in doing so, agree to their terms.
Or you, you know, don't use it.
That is kind of the concept behind the internet. A bunch of networks passing packets along, using the same protocol, not asking questions about their content.
Fifteen years ago we had a whole battle and everyone other than the evils at the top were against deep packet inspection. This new generation is a bunch of bootlickers.
Yeah, wtf is going on here? You're allowed to say corporations shouldn't do things, even if they're technically legal.
Are these people such fierce libertarians that they support Eli Lilly's right to price gouge diabetics for their insulin?
Do you miss the part where you're not paying to use that network and it's offered as a free service? I'm old too dumbass. I remember before wifi even existed. Do you also go to Walmart and expect to be able to charge your batteries for free off their power? Or use their phones for free?
You're confusing free as in beer and free as in speech. No one is forcing you to use their FREE service. Use your own cellular network jackass. The network that you DO pay to use.
What's next, going to someones house and demanding their Wi-Fi password because "the Internet is free man!"
I mean, with that logic you might as well argue that this whole community is pointless because no one is forced to use any of the products or services that use an asshole design, free or not.
The purpose of this community, as I see it, is to point out anti-consumer practices used in existing products and services. While it could be intended to get the attention of someone who can change it, realistically it's an asshole design because they likely knew it wouldn't be well-liked from the start.
The purpose of this community as I see it is:
Walmart isn't obligated to offer wifi, but sometimes you can have a shit deal even when the price is 0.
Check this post out Buddah
Note the significant spittin’ of fax between the top and bottom rows of pixels
There were maybe one or two comments I think posted early on that made me think “wait, did I post this on CorporateJerk or HailSamWalton by mistake” 😀
Wal-Mart sux, public WiFi is not ideal, yeah duh now lemme poop on a particularly poor example of Fortune 50 behavior pls 😉
(Hmm by which I mean Fortune 1)
The issue being it seems they block VPNs based on the screenshot. At least that's what I am thinking this iCloud thing is
Yes? Indirectly its baked into the cost of service.
While I get the sentiment, I can't help but picture the complaining customer "I PAY your wages" from that statement.
Because it is. The customer isn't paying for the hardware, electricity, or bandwidth. Dude above is a nonce.
Woosh...
What service? It's baked into the cost of collecting data. That's literally the exact reason they give it to you FOR FREE.
You really need to learn the difference between free speech and free beer. You're asking for free beer.
Correction, cost of goods is what I meant. I'm not going to Walmart just for the WiFi.
My comment was also meant to be sarcastic. Free WiFi while I spend my earnings, which I'd expect prices to reflect the cost of this service, in a giant metal box seems fair to me. Trading privacy as an extra cost I'm not okay with, so I won't use it.
Thanks :)
Not only is it baked into the cost of goods and offered as one of their services to attract customers (like “free” pick up), it reduces labor costs by showing customers which shelves to peruse to find their comic books and their chocolate milk. Their captive portal also serves as an ad for digital payment & their scan + mobile checkout offerings (coincidentally both enabled by Internet service like their Wi-Fi), which may increase retention and reduce labor costs respectively.
THEY DONT EVEN LET ME USE DATA THO! Like they force me to use their wifi while inside the store and I HATE IT. I cant even call my mom cus it just murders any kind of single I had going in there.