[Vision2020] You (and Your Cellphone) on Candid Camera

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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July 18, 2013
You (and Your Cellphone) on Candid Camera By THE EDITORIAL
BOARD<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html>

Anybody who shops at online stores like Amazon.com knows that those
merchants track customers, what they look at, what they buy and how long
they spend on the site. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that
traditional retailers — with little or no notice — have started tracking
shoppers in stores, using security cameras and devices that can monitor the
location of customer cellphones.

In this era of big
data<http://www.nytimes.com/compendium/collections/576/big_data>and
cheap monitoring equipment and software, national chains like Family
Dollar and even neighborhood cafes are using tracking technologies to offer
coupons to customers and gather information about their in-store shopping
habits, according to a recent article in The
Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html>.
Retailers say they need to monitor customers so they can help them find
what they want. If you linger in the men’s formal wear section, for
instance, a store might send you a coupon that offers you a free shirt with
the purchase of a new suit.

Retailers also argue that they collect no more, and often a lot less,
information about their customers than Web merchants do. The Federal Trade
Commission says it has not
found<http://business.time.com/2012/09/18/private-eyes-are-retailers-watching-our-every-move/>evidence
that retailers are using facial recognition technology that could
allow them to identify and build profiles of customers. But what’s
disturbing about these tracking methods is that stores are mostly doing so
without informing their customers.

The technology that allows stores to track shoppers’ cellphones, for
instance, works even when customers do not log
on<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/euclid-analytics-nordstrom-retailers-tracking-smartphone_n_3237534.html>to
the Wi-Fi
networks<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/technology-turns-to-tracking-people-offline/>of
stores. The only way a cellphone user can avoid being tracked is to
turn
off the Wi-Fi feature on their phones, which few are likely to do if they
are unaware of the monitoring in the first place. While a few retailers
like Nordstrom have posted signs telling customers that they were being
monitored in this way, many others do not do so. (Nordstrom stopped
tracking cellphones in May, partly as a result of complaints from
customers.)

If stores want to track their customers, they should tell the public what
they are doing and give people the ability to opt out of monitoring. Many
shoppers say they are willing to give information about themselves in
exchange for special deals and promotions. But some consumers go to
physical stores because they want to protect their privacy. Traditional
retailers would be smart not to alienate customers by surreptitiously
tracking them.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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