“New in-store tracking technologies that give retailers data about the shopping habits of their customers is slowly making its way into brick-and-mortar stores around the world,” Stephan Doerner reports for The Wall Street Journal. “But the uptake is happening slowly in Germany, a country especially sensitive to privacy rights.”
“Since revelations that the U.S. spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, Germans are increasingly looking more to European vendors than Americans for their server needs,” Doerner reports. “That makes for a tough market for new products like Cupertino-based Apple’ Inc.’s iBeacon. The technology uses a version of Bluetooth, a form of wireless close-range communication, that senses nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as smartphones carried by shoppers in a store.”
Doerner reports, “One official at a German trade association said the trend ‘sounds like the NSA for shopping.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The world will soon figure out that iBeacon is yet another revolution from Apple.
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Look at Germany taking the moral high ground…
Turn that shit off.
iBeacon is a no go.
I do not want to be stalked for profit by Apple.
I wonder if in a future version of iOS, Apple will allow device owners to turn off iBeacon on their device. As far as a I know right now, the only way to do so is to turn off BlueTooth entirely.
Wouldn’t it be nice if being marketed to or having in-store location tracked be an option for the consumer in stead of a default?
IBeacon is like GPS signa, it does not do much. An app is needed to process the signal and do something useful.
Simply do not install apps that use iBeacon signals and you will not have indoor location info.
You are trying to avoid the inevitable; good luck.
Nooooo. Without Germany iBeacons is DOA.
/s
iBeacon=Apple iBacon!
Pork & Apple pie anyone?
Which one do you work for Giggle or SameSung?
The MDN Take (along with comments from many, many posters here over the last months and years) will be proven in the long run to be extremely prescient.
With all the things that are happening in the world right now, it’s time to make good decisions about turning things off vs tuning things on. Just saying.
Call me paranoid if you want, I really don’t care, just give me your e-mail address so that I can contact you when I change my mind on that.
Yeah right. They have as head of their government an ex-stassi.
You really believe the krauts do not spy on us? In Europe you will have immigration agents jump on a train and check documents at any time. Do we do that here? I am a witness to it, both in Dutch and German territories. Europeans are a bunch of hypocrites and will only fight to the last American.