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| Footpath uses mobile phone data to track movement |
Path
Intelligence, a UK firm, has its services at more than ten malls in Britain and
around Europe. But its success has raised privacy concerns as well.
Most of us
know that when we surf or shop online, the pages we visit can be recorded and
tracked. That's how websites like Google and Facebook are able to sell us ads
ostensibly targeted to our interests.
But while
tracking online movements and how that translate into sales is relatively easy
online, this level of monitoring is much harder to do offline. Britain's
brick-and-mortar shops are having a rough time - as well-known national chains
like Woolworths have gone bust, thousands of other stores have closed, and
total sales have stagnated in recent years.
Online it's
a different story: this Christmas the number of people shopping online was
nearly thirty percent higher than last year, with overall Internet sales
tripling in three years.
Enter Path
Intelligence, a British company based in Portsmouth in southern England, and
its new shopping monitoring product. Footpath is in operation in at least ten
malls in the UK, and has been sold to seven countries, mainly in Europe.
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| Path Intelligence detects what stores people go to, and more importantly, where they're not spending money |
But, its
success has recently raised privacy concerns as well. In the past few months,
campaign groups, online discussion boards, and even an American senator have criticized
the way Footpath has been deployed.
"Typically
a retailer would have 20 to 30 percent of its shoppers buying something, so 70
to 80 percent of shoppers in store don't
actually purchase," explained Sharon Biggar, Path Intelligence's CEO. "And
that's the opportunity, that's what offline retailers are trying to identify,
where those people went, what they looked at but what they didn't buy."
Temporary
anonymous identification
Biggar's
firm provides that information by tracking customers – or rather their mobile
phones – as they go shopping. The system uses a unique signal given out by each
phone – rather like a computer's IP address.
"It's
called a temporary mobile subscriber identifier," Biggar told Deutsche
Welle. "It's just a random number that Vodafone, Orange or O2 ascribes to
your phone. And then we're simply passively observing that number as it moves
around a particular space."
Using
around ten receivers spread across the floor of the average shopping mall,
Footpath can triangulate a person's location to within a couple of meters –
revealing which shops somone has visited, and even which department.
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| Vodafone is one of the mobile phone partners that provides anonymized data to Path Intelligence |
Path
Intelligence charges retailers 39,000 ($49,000) to 77,000 euros ($97,000)
depending on the length of time monitored and how much space is being watched.
The major
UK developer Land Securities - which has installed Footpath in some of its
malls – said the data helps identify which shops are performing well and which
aren't, and helps improve the layout by identifying crowd bottlenecks.
However,
many privacy advocates are starting to wonder about how secure this new
monitoring system is, and if this privacy-for-analytics trade-off is worth it.
"If
consumers can't be confident that the regulation protects their anonymous phone
location being tracked, then how can they be confident that something far more
intrusive won't come along?" said Nick Pickles, of the London-based
campaign group, Big Brother Watch.
"And
before we know it – technology moves much, much faster than the law - and
consumers are the ones who suffer, and everyone's sat going: why wasn't the
protection in place first?" he told Deutsche Welle.
Similarly,
Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York state sent a letter to Biggar in
November asking detailed questions about the service.
"A
shopper's personal cell phone should not be used by a third party as a tracking
device by retailers who are seeking to determine holiday shopping
patterns," he wrote.
In the US,
two malls halted using Footpath after Schumer raised concerns, while two
American retail giants, JCPenney and Home Depot, are still considering its use.
Fewer
privacy protections in the offline world
However,
since last May, in the European Union, websites are required to give clear
consent for all cookies - the bits of computer code that track, store and
transmit this type of information online. Oddly, no similar legislation
currently exists for the physical world in the United Kingdom or across the
27-member bloc.
"I
would say it's innocuous compared to a cookie," Biggar said. "A
cookie is actually downloading something onto your device, it's actually
physically changing your device. We are in no way interacting with your device
whatsoever. We make the very definite statement wherever our system is located
that we put up signs and we inform shoppers that this is going on."
One
shopping mall where the Footpath system is in operation is Cardinal Place, in
central London. However, while there is a metal sign 25 centimeters (9.8
inches) across, it only faces shoppers as they leave the center.
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| Many Britons are already subjugated to ubiquitous CCTV cameras |
An informal
survey of shoppers suggested that few had ever actually noticed the sign. While
most people didn't seem to mind it, others did have some privacy concerns.
"If
it's being used simply to get information on footfall numbers, that kind of
thing, then I don't think it's a particular issue at all," said one man,
who declined to give his name. "I think if it was tracking individuals, so
they could actually work out where you were going then I might be a bit
concerned, but if it's clearly anonymous, then I don't think it's an issue at
all."
There is
still concern that mobile network operators could link the temporary mobile
subscriber identifier with an actual telephone number and then, an individual.
Future use
for crowd control
Meanwhile,
Path Intelligence is looking into applications beyond the shopping mall – to
improve the flow of crowds at rock concerts, and even tracking people in
refugee camps.
However,
the company says it takes privacy seriously. Biggar added that her company was
asked to help find suspects after the riots last summer – which affected
shopping centers across the country.
"The
mall owners in particular were keen that those criminals be brought to
justice," she said. "But however, we
weren't able to help them at all, because we change all of the numbers,
there's no way we could link a number back to an individual, so in that case we
were both protecting the privacy of shoppers, but also unfortunately also of
criminals."
Author: Robin Powell, London
Editor: Cyrus Farivar
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