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What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You
Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan. 13, 2014 | Elizabeth Dwoskin

Posted on 01/14/2014 7:09:37 AM PST by Second Amendment First

Fan Zhang, the owner of Happy Child, a trendy Asian restaurant in downtown Toronto, knows that 170 of his customers went clubbing in November. He knows that 250 went to the gym that month, and that 216 came in from Yorkville, an upscale neighborhood.

And he gleans this information without his customers' knowledge, or ever asking them a single question.

Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city.

The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. That allows them to create portraits of roughly 2 million people's habits as they have gone about their daily lives, traveling from yoga studios to restaurants, to coffee shops, sports stadiums, hotels, and nightclubs.

"Instead of offering a general promotion that may or may not hit a nerve, we can promote specifically to the customer's taste," says Mr. Zhang. He recently emblazoned workout tank-tops with his restaurant's logo, based on the data about his customers' gym visits.

Turnstyle is at the forefront of a movement to track consumers who are continuously broadcasting their location from phones. Other startups, such as San Francisco-based Euclid Analytics Inc., use sensors to analyze foot-traffic patterns, largely within an individual retailer's properties to glean insight about customer behavior.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: ispy; phones
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To: Resolute Conservative
Plus you CANNOT turn it off.

Sure you can. Just store your cell phone in a plastic mylar bag, like a potato chips bag.

The bag creates a Faraday Cage and prevents your phone from sending or receiving signals.

41 posted on 01/14/2014 9:22:50 AM PST by upchuck (My Internet addiction is so bad... it's alt of ctrl.)
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To: upchuck

I can go for that but the wife unit would not be able to barrage me with endless text messages ;)


42 posted on 01/14/2014 9:24:40 AM PST by Resolute Conservative
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To: upchuck

Would wrapping the phone/tablet, etc. in aluminum foil do the same thing?


43 posted on 01/14/2014 9:38:17 AM PST by madison10 ( Taking a husband shopping is akin to hunting with the game warden.)
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To: Second Amendment First
What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You

All of them. I'd like to have encryption on my phone, but I don't trust it not to immediately ship my keys to some trollop at the NSA.

 

44 posted on 01/14/2014 9:40:22 AM PST by zeugma (Is it evil of me to teach my bird to say "here kitty, kitty"?)
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To: Black Agnes
I’ve always thought that taping an old phone to the underside of an Allied Van Lines trailer would be interesting.

If you tapped into the electrical system of the truck to keep it powered, that would be really fun.

45 posted on 01/14/2014 9:43:37 AM PST by zeugma (Is it evil of me to teach my bird to say "here kitty, kitty"?)
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To: Hardastarboard

Just buy a sleeve that blocks the signal. It rendered the phone “out of service” while inside the sleeve.

http://silent-pocket.com/


46 posted on 01/14/2014 9:46:41 AM PST by TheThirdRuffian (RINOS like Romney, McCain, Christie are sure losers. No more!)
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To: null and void

I still don’t have a smart phone… guess I’ll just have to live with the computer sleuthing they do


47 posted on 01/14/2014 9:52:13 AM PST by Nifster
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To: Second Amendment First

Our phone is not sharing any secrets because we live in a dead zone, are retired and cannot justify the cost of a cell phone.


48 posted on 01/14/2014 9:55:56 AM PST by Dustbunny ("Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. " Ronald Reagan)
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To: tomkat

That is what the NSA wants you to think!


49 posted on 01/14/2014 10:47:56 AM PST by minnesota_bound
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To: Second Amendment First

Protect your family. Get the iFoil hats today.
http://bigmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/tin-foil-hat.jpg


50 posted on 01/14/2014 10:55:32 AM PST by minnesota_bound
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To: Second Amendment First
we can promote specifically to the customer's taste

Yeah, uh huh, that's his story and he's sticking to it. It wouldn't take much to to stalk or blackmail his customers. One step more and he'll have their passwords and access to their bank. Seems like the Sochi Olympics would have more privacy.

51 posted on 01/14/2014 11:30:34 AM PST by bgill
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To: cripplecreek

Just another reason I don’t have a smartphone.


52 posted on 01/14/2014 11:33:16 AM PST by bgill
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To: Black Agnes

It’s been at 3-4 years since my cheapie non-smart one was used. It’s just there for emergencies. A $7/mo insurance. I just don’t see people’s need for a smart phone with all the lasted bells and whistles.


53 posted on 01/14/2014 11:52:08 AM PST by bgill
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To: Second Amendment First

Mine is saying I don’t carry a smartphone so buzz off snoop.


54 posted on 01/14/2014 11:54:04 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Proud Infidel, Gun Nut, Religious Fanatic and Freedom Fiend)
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To: Second Amendment First

Johnny: [after hearing the sirens] It’s the phone cops. They know what I did here today.
Venus: What are you talking about?
Johnny: They’re coming to get me, man!
Venus: That’s paranoia, man!
Johnny: Wake up, sucker, this is the phone company we’re talking about! They see everything, they know everything, they got their own covert police force! I’m probably wired for sound right now! I gotta get out of here!
Venus: Johnny!
Johnny: Don’t use my name!!


55 posted on 01/14/2014 11:55:34 AM PST by dfwgator
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To: Second Amendment First

I almost never use my cell phone.

I hope my last conversation, which was with my husband, was interesting to whomever at the NSA/FBI was listening to us talk
about why our elderly cat is having diarrhea problems and what to do about eliminating whichever food may be causing it.


56 posted on 01/14/2014 12:01:50 PM PST by TheOldLady
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To: Resolute Conservative
What people don’t realize is that most all carriers are embedding a program named Carrier IQ. Not only does it capture every key stroke it overrides your system and turns on services like the GPS locater that I cannot keep turned off. It comes on every time the tower signal changes or you make/receive a call. Of course AT&T and other carriers deny it is there but you can download an app the will tell you if it is installed. Plus you CANNOT turn it off.

Carrier IQ Agent can be turned off permanently in Blackberry BES 10.1.3 or 10.2.

57 posted on 01/14/2014 12:01:58 PM PST by Praxeologue
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To: TheRhinelander
All you have to do is turn WiFi off. Problem solved. You shouldn’t have it turned on anyway unless you are at home.

Exactly!

58 posted on 01/14/2014 12:18:34 PM PST by Eaker (Sweat dries, blood clots and bones heal so suck it up buttercup.)
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To: madison10
Would wrapping the phone/tablet, etc. in aluminum foil do the same thing?

Yes. The plastic bag for chips, etc. is pretty much a sheet of aluminum foil with a plastic covering.

Put your phone in a chips bag and then try to call it. Does it ring?

Here's instructions for making a wallet from aluminum foil and duct tape. Handy for shielding RFID cards from snoops.

59 posted on 01/14/2014 12:33:39 PM PST by upchuck (My Internet addiction is so bad... it's alt of ctrl.)
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To: Cold Heart

A friend changed providers mostly to get a new phone, so he just gave me the old one. I’d guess it’s four or five years old. The screen is about size of the credit card. It opens up with a real keyboard in the bottom part. It’s definitely poor for surfing the web, but I only use it now and then for that, mostly checking email from time to time if I’m out of town.

There was no fiddling around to make it work with wifi or anything like that. I enable wifi, I do my internet stuff in the McDonald’s or hotel room or wherever I am that has wifi, and then I turn the whole thing off again.

I have no “apps” on it as the first thing they ask you is a lot of personal questions. I don’t even want to make up a fake persona for that.

I use it mostly to play music that I’ve transferred to its own memory card, to take pictures now and then (note that there would be no location info on the pictures), and for making voice or text notes to myself.


60 posted on 01/14/2014 12:59:40 PM PST by jiggyboy (Ten percent of poll respondents are either lying or insane)
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