By: Rebecca Rubin
Walking in downtown Boston after retrieving your morning coffee, you probably glance at your phone two or three times and review your latest Facebook notification. Notifications are all well and good when you expect them, but what if you were walking around in the mall and every single store floods you with excess notifications? Avid shoppers may be overcome with excitement to hear of the latest sale at their favorite store, but not all of those notifications may be linked to apps you downloaded. The alerts may not be so much harmful as they may be an annoyance, but this action is a reality with advertising Beacons, and many are concerned about the privacy implications with these signals.
Beacon is an advertising software that sends Bluetooth signals to smartphones which have downloaded specific apps. While companies partnered with Beacon contend that no personal data is shared, the software works by detecting app user’s locations and sending certain information which companies claim are mere signals and not data, to the phone, similar to a Wi-Fi access point. Recently, beacons were installed throughout 500 New York City phone booths by the advertising company Titan. Following a slew of privacy concerns, the city opted to have every last beacon removed, particularly because of the lack of consent from the New York City public over the installation.
This isn’t the first time Beacon has undergone some heat. Beacon launched with Facebook’s partnership in 2007, quickly causing a backlash of controversy among users and upsetting privacy advocates. The software published Facebook user activity and announced such activity on users’ newsfeeds, revealing all to Facebook “friends.” Facebook tried to make up for its apparent mistake by making Beacon solely an opt-in program that would not store a user’s information or activity, but the outcries continued. Beacon was finally shut down in 2009 following a class action suit.
Not all advertisements are sent to consumer’s cellphones because they opted in to receive such notifications. Many advertisements are released because a consumer has downloaded an app that may be affiliated with another program, and some of these apps lack privacy policies. The main issue lies within the inability to consent to such opt-in programs, just like the Facebook Beacon. Even Apple has jumped on the bandwagon with iBeacon which allows for a shopper at the local Stop & Shop to receive quick updates about produce and snacks on sale as they walk past those particular grocery aisles. However, this software also records and stores customer movements for later data analysis, tracking social tendencies for future advertisements. Refuting concerns, Apple does require that a specific app is downloaded so that consent is actually elicited from iPhone users. Even with such privacy protection, however, privacy advocates are worried that they cannot control what data is released or sent to their phones. Apple in a sense faults consumers for not reviewing privacy policies of third-party app services to understand how location data is utilized.
As the holidays approach, it would not be surprising to see retailers taking advantage of alerting mobile users to flash deals and coupons once a person sets foot in a store. Perhaps, as some proponents of Beacon software have proposed, self-regulation policies as simple as posting notices on the doors of retailers, warning customers of tracking practices, will be enough to stifle concerns. Yet, with consumer America and this steadfast age of technology, it seems unlikely Beacon programs will die out. Should the responsibility to curb privacy fears be on retailer or consumer? Until consumers in this “one-click, accept” world begin to scan the fine print of privacy policies, it seems complaints may be unwarranted when people agree to terms without knowing what they may agree to. Yet, where privacy policies are nonexistent, a “Do Not Track List” implemented by retailers may suffice, or data privacy may continue to be simply, just a concept.
