In a landmark article titled "Target Knows You're Pregnant," we witness the shock that a father feels when he finds out through a mailing that his teen daughter is expecting. Turns out that each Target customer is assigned a unique ID, and that combined with beacon tracking, her purchase history and demographics, led the retail behemoth to conclude that his daughter was in fact, pregnant.
Beacon proximity marketing, uses the Bluetooth function of your phone to tell the store and advertiser your exact location. So if you're a cross-dressing man who regularly spends way too much time looking at man-sized pumps, you might start getting notices in your email. Pair the Bluetooth with the shoppers store app that they've convinced you to download and install, and you unleash a treasure trove of personal data for companies to gobble up.
So if you're into plump goth girls with a secret predilection for K-Pop bands, someone is going to know. :)
Now many people don't give a rats ass how much of their personal information gets out and about, but the rest of us want to preserve as much privacy as we can. It's been reported that Walmart hides BT beacon trackers inside LED lights, so that anytime you're in Bluetooth range... The simple answer is to turn BT off when out shopping, but how many people are willing to do that? In this case, knowing is half the battle, that way you're empowered with the information to make an informed decision about how much data you're willing to share.
I limit the types of apps downloaded to my device and check settings in order to tweak what each app is allowed to access. When buying a new phone, I uninstall or disable as much of the bloatware that I can. The quest for zero privacy leaks is likely unrealistic, but we can limit how much info gets out. Security questions for logins are yet another way to build a unique profile identifying you. I never insert real answers to those questions and make up fake answers for them. My responses must be driving them crazy, since they are all over the place. All they need is the bare minimum amount of information to get the job done, that's all they're getting.
I've noticed they ask about pets a lot. The hope is that they'll use your dogs name and city to find the animal database with your registered private information on it. Sneaky. What's that old saying? "If you're not paying for it, you are the product," Couldn't be more true today in this era of prostituting your digital assets. This is what makes Hive so powerful in the ability to retain ownership of our data while offering a way to monetize our content ourselves. The page has turned now and there's no going back.
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