Walmart Means To Spy On Clothing Use

247wallst.com ^ | July 23, 2010 | Douglas A. McIntyre

[Yosemitest]

Walmart Means To Spy On Clothing Use
July 23, 2010 by Douglas A. McIntyre

Walmart (NYSE: WMT) plans to put radio chips into clothing including underwear.
The big box retailer wants to know what and how much people buy so it can order enough inventory.
Walmart will be, of course, accused of spying on its customers,
but the question is whether there is any harm in it.
The move should certainly improve the company’s supply chain management.
The new system will allow Walmart to see right down to the size level which clothing in about to go out of stock. 
If  it is effective,  all the Walmart locations will probably use the technology.

“This ability to wave the wand and have a sense of all the products that are on the floor or in the back room in seconds
is something that we feel can really transform our business,” said Raul Vazquez, the executive in charge of Wal-Mart stores in the western U.S. told The Wall Street Journal.

There is some concern that if the radio-powered tags are not taken off the clothing that the movements and behavior of customers can be tracked.
That depends on how rigorous Walmart is in removing the tags at check-out.
Human error is certainly an issue at a retailer as large as Walmart, but tracking a pair of jeans or underwear would seem to have limited use
and it is hard to see how it would really cause privacy issues.
Secret tracking of the clothing would be an PR disaster for Walmart
which means it will likely be careful about whether the devices leave its stores.

The technology should increase inventory efficiency for Walmart and its competitors.
It is hard to quantify what the cost saving for this are, but it will allow the retailers to order inventory “just in time”
instead of having large amounts of clothing sitting in warehouses waiting to be shipped until retail workers decide which items are about to sell out.

The process would also have some benefit to customers.
Those 34 long pants buyers will not have to drive 20 miles to find that their favorite jeans are out of stock.

[jla]

Jokes are usually funny. And, I don’t believe that you were not serious.

[Yosemitest]

After helping out with aging parents, and working to overcome their confusion or scatterbrained doings, this could be a real problem.

If these things "beep" when going through the door, a swipe at the cash register doesn't always "kill" their sensors.
After a few minutes they can return to normal operations, if not "killed" properly.

How will you feel when they accuse your parents or grandparents of stealing,
because they forgot to remove a sensor from a tag.
And what if it's sewn into the garment, say the elastic band, or something similar.

And on a lighter note, what if my aging parent has an "accident", will the tracking sensor short out and shock them?

[Mojave]

[HiTech RedNeck]

Many of these sensors also detect “beepable” items coming in the doors, for this very reason. I’d expect Wal-Mart to handle this situation pretty well because of their greeters. “Excuse me for a moment, sir, while I cancel your underpants... (quick pass with canceling wand)... Thank you, please enjoy shopping at Wal-Mart!”

[Yosemitest]

You got me laughing so hard, I dropped my water glass.
Luckily I didn't spill it on my 11 year old laptop.

[HiTech RedNeck]

oh, you ARE?

[TheBlueMax]

Man, that’s thirty pounds of puddin’ in a ten pound bag!

[Nooseman]

Chicks dig me because i rarely wear underwear.

[Salamander]

LOL

[Salamander]

ROFLMAO!

[maybe he hates panty lines and loves the feel of leather on his bare arse, too]

:)

[Salamander]

If I looked like that, I’d either starve myself for a month *or* buy a burka.

[eek!]

I’m amazed she’s not gracing the people of WalMart site.

[then again, considering I’ve gone into Wally’s wearing a black velvet caped Victorian maxi-coat and top hat and it *wasn’t* Hallowe’en, I’m amazed *I’m* not on it]....LOL

[Salamander]

[skr]

Isn’t this what their cash registers tell them? This seems like overkill, as well as an invasion of privacy.

[Salamander]

“doctor will have to report your individual ‘bmi’ (body mass index) (in other words, how fat you are) to the government, each time you visit the doctor”

I’m 18!

[and I LIKE it]....LOL

[Oztrich Boy]

There is some concern that if the radio-powered tags are not taken off the clothing that the movements and behavior of customers can be tracked.

OK if you are so stupid that you don't take the store tags off your clothes, then you should be tracked 24/7

[skr]

Correction, some Americans and probably some illegal immigrants, and, quite possible, some legal immigrants and even some tourists are thieves. I have a POS system that told me what sold. I bet Wal-Mart has a far better POS system, so why do they want to spend more money on another system? Why slow down the checkout line for an unnecessary inventory procedure? It’s a far different thing to take home a barcoded tag then to be followed home by a tracking system. Someone is going to use that in a negative way.

Conversely, someone will probably base a murder mystery on the radio-chips and someone else will invent a radio-chip disabler. So, there may be an upside, after all.

[Yosemitest]

On a more serious note ... here's some more information.

Walmart Turns to 'Smart Tags' to Track Inventory
Friday, July 23, 2010

The retail giant Walmart will be attaching electronic ID tags to some of the clothing it sells.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the so-called "smart tags" are part of a system to keep track of a store's inventory.

Wal-Mart said the tags will help reduce theft and counterfeiting, the latter particularly affecting prescription medicines.

Walmart officials at the company's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., refused to say how much the retailer is spending on the new technology.

However, some privacy advocates have concerns.
Even though the tags can be removed from clothing, they can't be turned off.
Anyone could pick up signals from them.

For example, if a tag is thrown into a trash can, anyone with a handheld scanner can find out what a person recently bought.

Walmart believes the tags represent cutting edge technology that could one day replace the bar code.
The radio frequency information or RFID tags will be placed in about 3,700 Walmart stores next month.



---

And from WSJ.COM

.... While the tags can be removed from clothing and packages, they can't be turned off, and they are trackable.
Some privacy advocates hypothesize
that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes
and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought.

They also worry that
retailers will be able to scan customers who carry new types of personal ID cards as they walk through a store, without their knowledge.
Several states, including Washington and New York, have begun issuing enhanced driver's licenses that contain radio- frequency tags with unique ID numbers,to make border crossings easier for frequent travelers.
Some privacy advocates contend that
retailers could theoretically scan people with such licenses as they make purchases,
combine the info with their credit card data,
and then know the person's identity the next time they stepped into the store.


"There are two things you really don't want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that's where we are seeing adoption,"
said Katherine Albrecht, founder of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering
and author of a book called "Spychips" that argues against RFID technology.
"The inventory guys may be in the dark about this,
but there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors."

Smart-tag experts dismiss Big Brother concerns as breathless conjecture, but activists have pressured companies.
Ms. Albrecht and others launched a boycott of Benetton Group SpA last decade
after an RFID maker announced it was planning to supply the company with 15 million RFID chips.

Benetton later clarified that it was just evaluating the technology
and never embedded a single sensor in clothing.

Wal-Mart is demanding
that suppliers add the tags to removable labels or packaging
instead of embedding them in clothes,
to minimize fears that they could be used to track people's movements.
It also is posting signs informing customers about the tags.


"Concerns about privacy are valid, but in this instance, the benefits far outweigh any concerns,"
says Sanjay Sarma, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"The tags don't have any personal information.
They are essentially barcodes with serial numbers attached.
And you can easily remove them."

---

They may really be something to worry about, here.

[Semper Mark]

Man, that’s thirty pounds of puddin’ in a ten pound bag!

You gotta be a country boy.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I still say bunk to the idea that these are non cancelable tags, if only because the store’s periodic “inventory scans” would be skewed by wearers of past purchased tagged garments shopping or working in the stores, and because that would ruin their usefulness for catching shoplifters. As for having one’s tags sniffed in the trash, that’s a novel hack, but a garbage surfer could learn at least as much from the conventional paper and plastic packaging discarded by a consumer at home. In paranoid mode, flush the stupid thing down a garbage disposer to be ground to death. (Or even flush down the commode; who’s going to be screening your sewage before it gets to the main pipe? Or digging into your septic tank?)

[Semper Mark]

[then again, considering I’ve gone into Wally’s wearing a black velvet caped Victorian maxi-coat and top hat and it *wasn’t* Hallowe’en, I’m amazed *I’m* not on it]....LOL

Oh, you're on it. Maybe not at that particular time, but you're on it...

(No one escapes the Wal-Mart cam)