

Real-World Analytics: Shops secretly track customers via mobile phone - soundsop
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3945496.ece

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jws
I like all the protesting that they can't track the IMEI code back to a
person. They either don't want to, or they need better nerds.

With the {IMEI,time,location} that this produces and the
{store,creditcard,time} that the credit card machines produce I could have
reasonably reliable {IMEI,creditcard} mappings in two transactions, very
reliable in three. (except for your friends traveling with you, I'll have to
wait for you to shop without them to separate your identities)

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ComputerGuru
It seems that phones also transmit a phone number along with the IMEI code;
and a phone number certainly isn't anonymous.

Discussion is in the comments here: [http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/mapping-
computer-techniques-to...](http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/mapping-computer-
techniques-to-the-real-world/)

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danw
This has been happening for some time, and you can build your own using
gnuRadio if you wish to give it a try

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kogir
I love how people feel that collecting data they're broadcasting into the open
with no expectation of privacy is a privacy violation.

Think of it as your neighbors recording when the lights in your house are on
or off. It may be weird, but it's hardly wrong.

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axod
"should the data fall into the wrong hands."

What sort of wrong hands could make use of data like this??? They would know
that a certain IMEI code was in a certain shopping center at a certain time :/
wow.

