Many stores have installed Bluetooth beacon tracking that will monitor all customers cell phones (or other Bluetooth devices) precise location throughout the store.
The items on the receipt can work as a “checksum” for a specific pattern around that time of day.
Self checkouts also have cameras that can identify biometrics, repeat shoppers, and other data points for a profile. But it’s not known is the customer used one of those kiosks.
Smart move 👍
Congratulations, you’re in a new database.
I imagine it has a unique code (last digits of CC#) location and timestamp, and valuable purchase information advertisers are salivating over to profile you; and yes, I mean you, not your cousin. The only cash your cousin will see is just enough scraps to trigger feel-good responses so this can happen again.
Edit: if the receipt is indeed yours…
I had an Ubuntu system eat itself Christmas Eve at 1am. I think an update pooched some folder permissions and wiped the firewall settings.
It started with “Huh, the network drives won’t mount”, progressed to containers failing to start with “hardware not found” GPU-related errors -oh yeah, I still have to check that and make sure it is working- and yadda yadda… 13 hours later I got services back up and running.
Oof, today I slept in until 10. Ahhhhh…
Man, I wanted my Zoraxy migration to go smoothly, but it’s been stubborn as hell for me. 80% of my services transfered well, but a couple docker containers don’t like it and never got letsencrypt wildcard dns up and running; always an error. Still working on that in my spare time.
Oh no! A struggling utility! I wonder where excess money is flowing? What could possibly fund these upgrades? -[insert generalized doom & gloom] -
https://energyandpolicy.org/as-customers-struggled-utility-ceos-pay-spiked-last-year/
We burned a lot of midnight oil on that company. It was a early data analytics type venture that was fun, but had a lot of long nights. We had an ethical spin from the ground up which, in hindsight, is not really the direction the Internet wanted to take.
It was a great bunch of folks though. We keep in touch now and then.
Haha! Yeah we sure did.
It was a small startup in, gosh, 1999-2000 when the net was a new frontier. Lessons were learned. It’s since been acquired and folded into other businesses. The domain is still in my name with a very basic static page.
We had no intention of making/hosting a website with the trademark. The company was in agreement.
After we got it, the bossman comes to me and says “so we can make this email addresses now, right?”
Like, duuude… It’s not his expertise, I know, but he thought web pages and email was totally separate systems.
Anyway, that was almost 25 years ago. All water under the bridge.
That’s kinda how cybersquatting laws work.
Someone registered an available domain hours after I searched for it when I received our trademark. The domain was immediately put up for sale. I spent almost a year getting my ducks in a row to sue and reclaim the domain (I even had screenshots of the availability. The scammer was watching registration queries) but they let the domain expire for lack of interest. I scooped it up after that.
I don’t think Target is either complying with the law nor violating it; I don’t think it applies whatsoever and they just added the disclosure anyway. I no longer know who to believe so I’ll just assume they are all a bunch of lying arseholes at our expense.
Different stores have different prices based on geolocation. There’s nothing new with that. But if that reflects on the website, an algorithm didn’t use personal data to determine anything.
What I do think, besides incompetence, may be a desensitizing campaign numbing customers to the practice possibly for a future rollout or drum up opposition.
EDIT: Instarget is fucking about. “At a Target in North Canton, Ohio, Skippy peanut butter was $2.99 for some shoppers and $3.59 for others. The full 20-item basket varied by about 7% within each store.” “An Instacart spokeswoman said retailers on its platform set their own prices… A Target spokesman said the company is not affiliated with Instacart and bears no responsibility for prices on the platform.” https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/instacart/
I logged unique broadcasting Bluetooth devices for fun for a few months and I was amazed at how many hundreds if not thousands of devices it found.
And that logger was stationary. Unless you know and filter the Bluetooth address ranges of what you are looking for, you will be swamped with irrelevant data.
Side note: those Bluetooth beacons tracking people in stores are absolutely gobbling data.
Nothing wrong if you have the drivers, but if you find yourself in a pinch, they aren’t prevalent like Philips or standard screwdrivers. A socket set is part of our emergency kit now.
My SO’s car is a Ford (pretty reliable actually) and the first fix-it we did needed torx bits. Ugh, go out and get a set of those… come back and start again. I look around and they are everywhere. It might deter some, but to us it was a waste of time and a F-you to those of us who can fix our piles.
Oh, and a special F-you to whomever designed the absolute useless (not making it up; it’s a 4 inch hollow chunk or metal welded to the frame nothing bolts to, hides inside, or protects) protrusion blocking a wrench from the oil drain bolt. A pox on thee!
On one hand, bummer. But on the other, sort of a waste of hardware anyway.
I was a big time pro user. G3 tower with DVD card, G5 dual, Mac Pro 5,1 with dual X5690’s and other upgrades. But I had to drag those systems kicking and screaming out of Apple’s walled garden to do what is second nature on the PC side of things. Loved the OS back then, but not all users were braindead drones.
“Pro” stopped being a moniker for advanced capability, instead the most expensive, least hobbled version.
I hope whomever replaces Cook (rumor has it) once again remembers what it was like to be a nerd under all that businessman authority.
Yeah, upgrading to a Pi5 was super simple for me using the backup method. After the swap, I had to pair a few devices again and fix a couple automations to reflect the changes, but that was all. I’d definitely go that route vs start from scratch unless you are experiencing some serious problems.
I lost a beloved cat a few months ago that ran into the road. My security camera caught the whole thing.
“What if?” Is its own torment for us, but analytically, she simply wasn’t visible and there was nothing the driver could/should have done to prevent the horrible outcome.
There are in life no-win situations. It hurts, but it’s an adult realization. Cats go under cars to hide - to avoid being seen - and can’t grasp danger the same as humans.
I trust others math more. Comment removed.
I just got a UGreen unit and while it is taking longer to set up then I’d like, the interface is pretty good and docker was up and running pretty quickly. Traefik is a royal pita, but that’s a user problem since I never used it before and it’s my test system.
The app database and store database are separate, both containing duplicate data on the receipt or any affiliate data sharing that can facilitate de-anomyzation.
A lot of retail -even my doctor office - do use this and have for a while.
BLE customer monitoring is certainly a thing. Here is an article from 2014: https://www.retail-innovation.com/carrefour-track-customer-journey-around-store-using-ble/
Here is a more modern ad-riddled writeup. https://www.encstore.com/blog/5162-a-step-by-step-guide-to-using-ble-beacons-in-retail
There is even a data broker claiming it records and updates your advertising profile before you get to the register. I wish I bookmarked that page when I read it years ago.
Disabling Bluetooth, I suspect, would stop tracking. Note some modern phones still respond to Bluetooth and tracking when powered off, such as the Pixel, unless Bluetooth is disabled before shutdown.
Basic cameras can do that, but companies like Walmart and Home Depot have more advanced systems. Walmart profiles customers and can identify and alert staff/police to repeat problem customers. Home Depot has a class action case claiming it uses face detection technology. Heck, my cheap-ola off-the-shelf home security camera can track people and license plates straight out of the box. The Flock cameras tracking people and vehicles all over the cities use an OS released in 2017. This tech is prevalent now.