Beacons are Bluetooth devices that emit simple signals that smartphones can pick up.
A beacon in a New York City phone booth ad would need to recognize a corresponding app to push beacon-linked content to that phone.
From what I can see from reading the article this isn't the scary "things that watch you without your knowledge" but more like "things you can connect to if you're nearby" - and given that there's WiFi hotspots and other things in this category too, it doesn't seem all that frightening. In other words you'd have to have allow your phone to connect to them for them to gather any info, and in that case it's not much worse than connecting to a WiFi hotspot setup for marketing purposes (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19... ).
(The fact that the majority of people leave their phones in a "promiscuous" mode with all the radios enabled and constantly looking for things to connect to, and submissively install apps without reading their privacy policies/terms of use carefully, is a different although related issue - but this is something you can educate yourself and protect against.)
"In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive 'opt-in' permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.) ... Gimbal-powered apps may collect your current location, the time of day you passed the beacon, and details about your device."
If the beacons are doing anything more, it is not reported in this article.
> (The fact that the majority of people leave their phones in a "promiscuous" mode ... )
Not everyone really understands what's going on with their phones or real intent of others (i.e the stores who provide wifi) so I think it unfair to lay blame on consumers for being 'uneducated'. There is a lot more overlap between 'things that watch you' and 'things you can connect to' than people realise. I'm reminded of the London bin tracking of last summer [1].
I hate all these FUD headlines that claim iBeacons can track you or send you adverts - everything to do with beacons is (at present) mediated by an app, and therefore subject to a user installing it and granting permissions. Sure, you can get people to install stuff that they don't understand and which will allow snooping etc. but that's by no means constrained to anything using the (Apple-owned) iBeacon standard.
I'll be more interested in keeping an eye on the URL-centric 'physical Web" experimental project recently revealed by Google (https://github.com/google/physical-web) as that potentially removes the need for app-based mediation of beacon (without the "i" prefix) interactions, uses the universality of http and URLs for content identification, and could make for a much lower-friction way of implementing beacon integration across different platforms.
Even if the actual interaction with people is mediated by an app, that doesn't mean data that is valuable to marketers(at the least) isn't being collected.
What about all of the bloatware that I get from the carriers? Those come installed by default and they can't simply be removed.
If apps like that take advantage of beacons, do you still think this is FUD?
Also - what's wrong with Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in general? It's not being used by one competitor here to knock down another one - so, I just don't see the problem with worrying about what will become of these beacons.
Wifi beacons were deployed in London[1][2] as part of advertising systems on waste bins. These logged your MAC address as you passed by and allowed targeted advertising. I believe they were removed once the rollout was publicised and people rightly kicked up a stink about it. It was an opt-out system because if wifi on your smartphone was switched on (which most people probably do) then it would automatically log your phone's presence. Users would have had to switch off wifi to avoid being tracked.
Do people normally have wifi enabled when they're out-and-about? I turn it on when I'm at home/at a friend's house, but otherwise turn it off since there's no wifi to be had, and it's just an extra drain on the battery.
This article is cheap sensationalism to foster Luddite paranoia. The beacons will only track those that want to be tracked. And there a lot of valid situations where people would want to share geographical information in order to be guided, notified or rescued.
Sometimes I feel that valid concerns on privacy are doing to IT what pollution did to chemistry: people got so panicked that blindly reject any valid contribution that technology might give.
The main point is that the beacons were installed in secret, without any public notice or consultation. And that, time after time, many "opt-in" services prove to be not so "opt-in" after all (thanks to technical backdooring and/or murky service agreements).
It isn't Luddite paranoid, or cheap sensationalism to point this out; it's good journalism, coming from a surprising source (BuzzFeed, which for years seemed to have cheap sensationalism written into its very DNA).
"In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive “opt-in” permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.)"
FFS, Buzzfeed. This is buried practically at the end, AFTER the giant infographic and 10+ grafs of scare text. It's like running the headline:
YOUR BREAKFAST MAY CONTAIN POISON
and then at the end of the article:
"Well, if you bought the cereal that said 'CONTAINS POISON' on the box and decided to eat it right now, that might be true."
Why is this exaggerated journalism even on here? These aren't tracking everyone in NYC within range, only those who have bluetooth enabled, downloaded a very specific application, and then allow the app to track you in the background. Now this is all for IOS, android on the other hand does have potential to be troublesome.
Several commenters here have stated that Bluetooth beacon interactions are mediated by apps and they are therefore not surveillance devices.
That's just not correct. Bluetooth beacons can log and report information about devices that come within range of those beacons with active Bluetooth radios. Only interactive-time applications of a beacon need the cooperation of an app on a wide-area connected device.
Beacons that don't have external power generally can't use WiFi or mobile networks to do it, but this information can be uploaded on demand. For example, this information could be collected when coins from pay phones are collected.
Moreover, these beacons are reportedly installed in pay phone kiosks that do have wired connectivity. It's possible, even likely, that they "phone home."
There are still phone booths in NYC? Without reading the article, just seeing the headline above, my first thought was that a reporter discovered strange, long-forgotten devices with handsets and number pads and coin slots, collecting dust in the booths.
People should not be tracked. Full stop. Even with their permission. We are headed for worse than Orwell ever imagined. I cannot believe some people consent to this.
There will come a time and soon whereby people will not be able to do a thing without someone tracking it.
I recommend watching Person of Interest. The TV show has started long before the NSA scandal, but it's like a Hollywood post interpretation of some major event. Except it was a premonition.
It's one of my favorite shows because it's at least plausible, and felt that way even before the 2013 revelations. A lot of the tech and storylines in the show are of course fictionalized and a bit "out there", but the core concepts it presents are at least within the bounds of possibility. I tend to view it both as suspension-of-disbelief popcorn entertainment, and as a telling allegory on today's surveillance state.
Ah Gimbal, the HaaS company... the beacons that require you to register them on-line to be able to reconfigure them. Also, iBeacon compatibility doesn't work well in Series 10, i.e. those you can order a dev-kit of for free.
I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to force all those various beacons to talk the same language. Right now, everyone is trying to lock users in to a particular brand. It's incredibly annoying (and the same thing goes for the entire IoT and home automation market).
Out of interest does anyone have any statistic on how often phone booths are used? I'd have thought that with most people owning mobile phones the need to ever use a pay phone is very rare
I was wondering that too. I very rarely see public phones anywhere except airports nowadays, and they're pretty thin on the ground even there (sometimes you see the dedicated lines that connect directly to (e.g.) a cab company). It's not like the old days when there was a phone booth every few blocks, and massive banks of pay phones in airports.
[+] [-] userbinator|11 years ago|reply
A beacon in a New York City phone booth ad would need to recognize a corresponding app to push beacon-linked content to that phone.
From what I can see from reading the article this isn't the scary "things that watch you without your knowledge" but more like "things you can connect to if you're nearby" - and given that there's WiFi hotspots and other things in this category too, it doesn't seem all that frightening. In other words you'd have to have allow your phone to connect to them for them to gather any info, and in that case it's not much worse than connecting to a WiFi hotspot setup for marketing purposes (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19... ).
(The fact that the majority of people leave their phones in a "promiscuous" mode with all the radios enabled and constantly looking for things to connect to, and submissively install apps without reading their privacy policies/terms of use carefully, is a different although related issue - but this is something you can educate yourself and protect against.)
[+] [-] jamesk_au|11 years ago|reply
"In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive 'opt-in' permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.) ... Gimbal-powered apps may collect your current location, the time of day you passed the beacon, and details about your device."
If the beacons are doing anything more, it is not reported in this article.
[+] [-] amirmc|11 years ago|reply
Not everyone really understands what's going on with their phones or real intent of others (i.e the stores who provide wifi) so I think it unfair to lay blame on consumers for being 'uneducated'. There is a lot more overlap between 'things that watch you' and 'things you can connect to' than people realise. I'm reminded of the London bin tracking of last summer [1].
[1] http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/
[+] [-] bndw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyhawkes|11 years ago|reply
I'll be more interested in keeping an eye on the URL-centric 'physical Web" experimental project recently revealed by Google (https://github.com/google/physical-web) as that potentially removes the need for app-based mediation of beacon (without the "i" prefix) interactions, uses the universality of http and URLs for content identification, and could make for a much lower-friction way of implementing beacon integration across different platforms.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|11 years ago|reply
I like it - might have to try a RPi build for one
[+] [-] knowaveragejoe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subway|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WorldWideWayne|11 years ago|reply
If apps like that take advantage of beacons, do you still think this is FUD?
Also - what's wrong with Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in general? It's not being used by one competitor here to knock down another one - so, I just don't see the problem with worrying about what will become of these beacons.
[+] [-] tonylemesmer|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 [2] http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/
[+] [-] viewer5|11 years ago|reply
Or does London have widespread public wifi?
[+] [-] diego_moita|11 years ago|reply
Sometimes I feel that valid concerns on privacy are doing to IT what pollution did to chemistry: people got so panicked that blindly reject any valid contribution that technology might give.
[+] [-] dreamweapon|11 years ago|reply
It isn't Luddite paranoid, or cheap sensationalism to point this out; it's good journalism, coming from a surprising source (BuzzFeed, which for years seemed to have cheap sensationalism written into its very DNA).
[+] [-] zavulon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] al2o3cr|11 years ago|reply
FFS, Buzzfeed. This is buried practically at the end, AFTER the giant infographic and 10+ grafs of scare text. It's like running the headline:
YOUR BREAKFAST MAY CONTAIN POISON
and then at the end of the article:
"Well, if you bought the cereal that said 'CONTAINS POISON' on the box and decided to eat it right now, that might be true."
[+] [-] Lord_Zero|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tashoecraft|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
That's just not correct. Bluetooth beacons can log and report information about devices that come within range of those beacons with active Bluetooth radios. Only interactive-time applications of a beacon need the cooperation of an app on a wide-area connected device.
Beacons that don't have external power generally can't use WiFi or mobile networks to do it, but this information can be uploaded on demand. For example, this information could be collected when coins from pay phones are collected.
Moreover, these beacons are reportedly installed in pay phone kiosks that do have wired connectivity. It's possible, even likely, that they "phone home."
[+] [-] joeclark77|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forca|11 years ago|reply
There will come a time and soon whereby people will not be able to do a thing without someone tracking it.
[+] [-] Zikes|11 years ago|reply
Even the city knows when I take a crap thanks to "smart meters".
[+] [-] clarkmoody|11 years ago|reply
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
[+] [-] mdda|11 years ago|reply
[0] http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s
[+] [-] Vulkum|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morganvachon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|11 years ago|reply
I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to force all those various beacons to talk the same language. Right now, everyone is trying to lock users in to a particular brand. It's incredibly annoying (and the same thing goes for the entire IoT and home automation market).
[+] [-] uptown|11 years ago|reply
And they're being removed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york-city-to-adv...
[+] [-] pattle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedino|11 years ago|reply