Ad company told to stop tracking people
Print Edition
Officials demanded yesterday that an advertising firm stop using a network of high-tech trash cans to track people walking through London’s financial district.
The Renew ad firm has been using technology embedded in the hulking receptacles to measure the Wi-Fi signals emitted by smartphones, and suggested that it would apply the concept of “cookies” — tracking files that follow Internet users across the Web — to the physical world.
“We will cookie the street,” Renew Chief Executive Kaveh Memari said in June.
But the City of London Corporation insisted Renew pull the plug on the program, which captures smartphones’ serial numbers and analyzes signal strength to follow people up and down the street. Renew didn’t return a call seeking comment on whether it would comply with the authorities’ demand.
The trash cans join a host of everyday objects from televisions to toilets that are being manufactured with the ability to send and receive data, opening up new potential for interaction — and surveillance.
It’s unclear how Renew had planned to use the data, which were gathered by its reinforced, shoulder-height pods stationed near St Paul’s Cathedral and Liverpool Street Station.
But if a company could see that a certain smartphone user spent 20 minutes in a McDonald’s every day, it could approach Burger King about airing an ad on the bin’s video display whenever that user walks by at lunchtime. Or it could target its commercials in real time by distinguishing between people who work in the area and visiting tourists.
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