Now the STORES are Tracking Our Movements - VIA OUR CELL PHONES!

I guess I should have seen this one coming and should either slap myself in the face or go find someone to do it for me to remind me that when the opportunity is there, someone will take advantage of it.  After all, I have worked in this industry for more than 40 years now and am usually keenly aware of the less than appetizing uses to which new technology is frequently adopted, but I didn't and now am . . .   shame on me!

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the issue is the fact that major corporations like Target, Nordstrom's, Family Dollar, Cabela’s, Macy's and Mothercare, along with untold other numbers of stores, are now using the WIFI PING capabilities on your cell phone to track you while you are shopping in their stores.

Not only are they tracking the number of customers who come in the stores, but they are also tracking how long you spend stopped in front of a particular item, what parts of the stores you spend the most time in, and, depending on the level of service they have subscribed to, may even be able to tell what items you are actually considering based on the number of times you go back and forth between items to do comparison shopping and price checking of various like items.

So how are they able to track us within their stores, and just what information can they gather?

The how part is easy:  they take advantage of the fact that our cell phones are, in many cases, constantly pinging for available WIFI networks so they can notify us that free or "open"  WIFI service is available for our use.  They are taking advantage of the fact that most of us are cheap and too lazy to do manual searches for WIFI, allowing our mobile devices to do the searching for such service and automatically notify us when those services are available.

They are also taking advantage of the fact that the steel roof and iron girder superstructures of their stores, along with the other wireless signal absorbing materials used in the construction of such facilities frequently absorbs so much of the cellular network's signal level as to make it unusable within those stores and take advantage of the fact that, by our very nature we will almost automatically take advantage of their free WIFI network to see if we can find an item sold within their stores for less money on Amazon or another web-based sales portal - which is frequently the case with most overpriced items, especially in major electronics stores like Bust Buy and the former Circus City stores where there was not, nor has there ever been, such a thing as a knowledgeable sales person or good customer service.

In defense of those stores who have adopted this tracking method, they are at a disadvantage when it comes to tracking customer spending habits.  Online vendors like Amazon have technology to their advantage because they can follow our every move electronically, keep a digital record of every item we look at, set cookies in our browsers, and use our logins and purchase history to know what our preferences are, how much we like to spend, and what we are looking for as soon as we walk in the digital door.  The poor bastards at the brick and mortar locations don't have such advantages and most of the human employees they have would not be capable of compiling such data even if they had the tools to do so in real time.  Fortunately someone created the sales person and equipped those ruthless individuals with the tools to bring tracking similar to the online retailers to the physical store level . . .

The Actual Technology:  I've already eluded to the fact that these stores are using our mobile devices to track us via their WIFI networks, but exactly what technology are they using?   It's simpler than it sounds:  they track our MAC addresses . . .

The MAC address is a unique code which is assigned to every network interface.  Whether a connection is made via Bluetooth, a hard-wired connection, or a wireless connection, there's a MAC address involved.  The MAC address is a HEXIDECIMAL or BASE 16 number which is hard encoded into the electronics of the device and looks something like this:  00:4B:9F:21:6C:A7.  This unique set of 12 numbers, which can range from 0 through F, gives the ability to set a unique, non-repeating identifier to every network device and is the code which is tracked by the services which the stores have now authorized third-party vendors to collect and store in the cloud -- WITHOUT first gaining your permission to do so -- tracking your every move and spending habits.

So Who's Collecting the Actual Data:  While there may be other vendors, the largest culprits in the shopper MAC address conspiracy business are currently Euclid Elements, NOMI, RetailNext, and Sparkfly.

What Can You Do to Protect Yourself:  The simplest solution is to turn off your cell phone whenever you get out of the car to go shopping.  No matter where you go, someone is going to try to figure out how to more effectively make you think you really need to purchase something you don't actually want to spend your money on.

The other solution is to OPT OUT.

OPTING OUT:  The bad news is that, at least in most cases, you'll never know you're being tracked.

Both Euclid Elements and NOMI provide OPT OUT websites where you can plug in your the MAC address of your cell phone and have them remove all tracking of that unique ID from their databases.

To opt out or Euclid Elements, go to: https://signup.euclidelements.com/optout

To opt out of NOMI, click on this link and then scroll down to the OPT OUT link at the very bottom of the screen.

RETAILNET does not provide an opt-out solution at this time.

SPARKFLY does not provide an opt-out solution at this time.

To opt our of being tracked requires that you look up your MAC address on your cell phone or wireless device so you may want to do that ahead of time so you can have it handy.  Pay close attention to the format you use when entering that number as the format is six sets of two hexadecimal digits separated by a COLON ":"

Finding your MAC address:

• Iphone
  Settings > General > About > Wi-Fi Address








• Android
  Settings > About > "Status" or "Hardware information" > Wi-Fi MAC address
• Blackberry
  OS 4.5-5.0: Options > Status > WLAN MAC
  OS 6.0-7.1: Setup > Options > Device > Device and Status Information > WLAN MAC
• Windows Phone            
  

  Settings > About > More info > MAC address

SUMMARY:

 

If you want to be truly safe from tracking while shopping, turn off your cell phones before you even pull into the parking lot!

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Who Owns Your Corporate Internet Property Identity?

Whenever I speak with a customer I am invariably deluged with questions about how to make their website more prevalent in search results, help them get rid of the deluge of spam messages they are receiving in their e-mail and asked why their digital presence costs so much money to maintain when they used to have an employee who did it as part of their daily work routine. 

I then take a look at the fact that their website has not been updated in several years because they don't have access to the login accounts at hosting company and, in many cases, don't even have legal ownership of the domain name.  

When I ask them how this happened they look at me like a deer caught in the headlights on a dark road and, invariably, reply, "what do you mean we don't own our domain name?  We still receive our e-mail!"  

Fortunately, so long as the hosting and domain name registration bills are paid, both the website and e-mail accounts will usually continue to work.  Unfortunately, a business in this position does not have any control over what they are paying for and, more often than not, they don't even have a copyright statement on the website.

Why should the ownership of your corporate Internet property identity be important to you?  

Your ownership of corporate information is important because if you are the owner of a company and have any kind of an Internet representation what is posted under your company name is the representation of your business in the digital world.  Unfortunately, even placing a valid copyright statement on a website or on a published or printed work does not always protect you from those wordy and very lengthy "digital agreements" which you must agree to, but almost no one ever reads, anytime you setup an online account.  So, in order to help protect you, here are some highlights of some of the terms set forth by companies who provide online file storage:

Dropbox, who's terms terms can be found here, says:

"Your Stuff & Your Privacy: By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”).  You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it.  These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below."

Microsoft SkyDrive, who's terms can be found here, says:

"5. Your Content: Except for material that we license to you, we don't claim ownership of the content you provide on the service.  Your content remains your content.  We also don't control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service."

 and Google Drive, who's terms can be found here, says:

"Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.  This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."

At the very least, everything you post publicly should have a copyright statement.  The proper format for a copyright statement is: 

"Copyright © 2010 - 2013 Lakes Region Historical Society, All Rights Reserved"

Of course, your copyright statement would contain your proper business name and the appropriate year range.  If this is the first time something is posted, it may contain only one year.

Photographs and documents should also contain copyright information.  How the individual copyrights are embedded in the individual documents and photographs will depend on the software you are using.  If you are selling photographs online, consider placing a watermark into the photograph showing both the owner's name and copyright information.  This should also be embedded into the meta data for the image file.

No matter how simplistic you make your effort, so long as you note that an article is copyrighted you have made the initial effort to protect yourself and your digital assets from illegal pilferage and use.

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Henderson Nevada Police Officers Sued for Invading Home, Assaulting Resident | Federal Case Cites 3rd Amendment: Ban on Quartering Soldiers

A lawsuit has been filed against the Henderson, Nev., police department over an incident in which its officers allegedly demanded to use a private home as a lookout for an investigation, then arrested the resident when he refused.

It raises the unusual claim that the police violated the Third Amendment, which prohibits the “quartering of soldiers” in private homes in peacetime without the owner’s consent.

“Whatever the ultimate outcome of this case, it is clear that lawyers and legal scholars should start taking the Third Amendment more seriously,” commented legal scholar Eugene Volohk. “Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is in fact a history of violations of the Third Amendment, such as the military’s brutal treatment of Alaska’s Aleutian Islanders during World War II.”

In the new case, filed just days ago, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell is suing Henderson, North Las Vegas and a long list of police officials and officers including Jutta Chambers, Garret Poiner, Ronald Feola, Ramona Walls, Angela Walker, Joseph Chronister and Christopher Worley.

Joining as plaintiffs are his parents, Michael and Linda Mitchell, who live nearby and also allegedly were physically rousted by police from their home.

They allege on July 20, 2011, Henderson officers responded to a domestic violence call at a neighbor’s residence.

According to the complaint, “At 10:45 a.m. defendant Officer Christopher Worley (HPD) contacted plaintiff Anthony Mitchell via his telephone. Worley told plaintiff that police needed to occupy his home in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ against the occupant of the neighboring house. Anthony Mitchell told the officer that he did not want to become involved and that he did not want police to enter his residence. Although Worley continued to insist that plaintiff should leave his residence, plaintiff clearly explained that he did not intend to leave his home or to allow police to occupy his home. Worley then ended the phone call.”

The complaint then explains that members of the police departments “conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.”

According to a report in Court News, “Defendant Officer David Cawthorn outlined the defendants’ plan in his official report: ‘It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for 

Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.’”

The lawsuit explains at least five police officers banged on Anthony Mitchell’s front door and demanded he leave, then broke down the door and pointed their guns at him.

“As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor. Fearing for his life, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell dropped his phone and prostrated himself onto the floor of his living room, covering his face and hands.”

His parents were lured out of their home and arrested, the lawsuit alleges.

According to the complaint, “Plaintiffs Anthony Mitchell and Michael Mitchell were subsequently transported to Henderson Detention Center and were booked on charges of Obstructing an Officer. Both Anthony and Michael Mitchell were detained for at least nine hours and were required to pay a bond to secure their release from custody.

“A criminal complaint was subsequently filed by the Henderson city attorney’s office … charging them with counts of Obstructing an Officer. All criminal charges against plaintiffs were ultimately dismissed with prejudice.”

The cities are named because they “developed and maintained policies and/or customs exhibiting deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of United States citizens, which caused the violations of plaintiff’s rights.”

The legal action alleges assault, battery, false arrest and imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, conspiracy, defamation, abuse, malicious prosecution, and negligence, and it claims the plaintiffs are due compensation for each offense.

Volokh noted that one question that would have to be resolved for damages to be due under the Third Amendment, one of several standards under which claims are being made, is whether “police … qualify as ‘solders.’”

“On the other hand, as Radley Balko describes in his excellent new book ‘The Rise of the Warrior Cop,’ many police departments are increasingly using military-style tactics and equipment, often including the aggressive use of force against innocent people who get in the way of their plans.

“In jurisdictions where the police have become increasingly militarized, perhaps the courts should treat them as ‘soldiers’ for Third Amendment purposes.”

The claim also seeks damages under the Fourth and 14th Amendments and under state law.

Police could not be reached over the holiday period for a comment.

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