Customer-tracking tactics move to brick and mortar

November 24, 2013

"Privacy is dead—get over it," has been a mantra of private investigators for years. But continuing revelations about how many different ways personal privacy is still disappearing are still enough to unnerve people. It is not just about the trail everybody leaves from the websites they visit, or from security cameras in public places. It is also about smart cars. It is about the cellular towers that serve their smartphones. And it is now also about their friendly brick-and-mortar retailer. One example of many is clothing retailer Nordstrom, which began tracking shoppers in its stores about a year ago through the Wi-Fi signals from their smartphones. At least the company was somewhat transparent about it—it posted a sign telling customers what it was doing. But that generated enough complaints for it to end the program in May. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2066740/customer-tracking-tactics-move-to-brick-and-mortar.html#tk.rss_all