Today we won't talk about Google, maybe we'll just mention it, but we won't deal with it. Do you believe that there is privacy on the Internet? The popular service TripAdvisor has started offering personalized recommendations, thanks to a closer partnership with Facebook. The online travel search service has called the new feature Just for You and promises to "serve" you customized hotel recommendations based on your preferences, search history on the site, and possible comments you have made.
For example, when you search for hotels for a specific geographic location, you'll see a series of tags to define your general preferences, such as location, style, hotel category, price range, amenities, and more.
TripAdvisor collects these details, your reviews, along with all your past searches, to deliver the best recommendations within a special “Just for You” window
The importance of big data in the world of information is well known, as it is known that large and small services record all our movements on the Internet, faithfully following the path set by Google. The analysis and management of big data is the next bet for the internet giants. The specially adapted pages in the search results are already ahead of us, without perhaps being so much adapted due to the impossibility of absolute analysis of the data. If you are stressed, do not read further.
In a perfect world, consumers benefit from this because they are shown ads for the exact products they need.
However, in reality, that's not exactly the case. Sellers appreciate your interest, and they try to sell you for the highest possible price.
Hotel and airline reservation systems use complex price adjustment systems that take into account a lot of information from each visitor, gathered through referrer tracking (referrer is the website that sends us to the page that tracks us), search engine optimization, and social network monitoring.
The most obvious application of this mechanism is hotel booking systems and airline ticket bookings. These sites use complex price adjustment systems that take into account a lot of information from each visitor. They are based on dozens of factors and have systems that can completely hide some information and present others just to get a better price.
Why? First impressions are half the battle. In real life, people judge you based on your appearance and clothes. On the Internet, the server can easily detect where you are from in the world, what device you are using, and what operating system you are using. If you use a Mac or iPhone and live in Western Europe or the US, you probably earn a lot of money and can spend a lot.
Also, these systems closely monitor the user who wants to travel and through different options adjust search results in real time.
Let's talk about Nordstrom and get away from the Internet for a bit. Nordstrom is an American retail company. For several months, the company tested a system locally in one of its stores that monitored the movements of its customers who had Wi -Fi. The "experiment" as mentioned above was carried out in 17 of its stores and when it finished its research, the company published the results of the monitoring. The result of this publication, however, was that after it was broadcast by a television station in Dallas in May, the company was forced to stop monitoring its customers.
Then they picked up the story from the New York Times, sparking a debate about privacy and passive surveillance via Wi-Fi or other technologies. The system used by Nordstrom and many other businesses, provided by Euclid Analytics , accurately tracks the movements of individual phones, even when they are not connected to the surveillance site’s Wi-Fi.
How does it work?
The technique exploits the fact that the Wi-Fi is “frivolous”: Wi-Fi adapters in mobile phones and laptops reveal a lot of information about these devices as they try to negotiate connections with other devices in close proximity. Before a device even connects to a Wi-Fi network, it constantly broadcasts its information. Most devices send “discovery requests,” which reveal the names of networks the device has connected to in the past. The requests are sent continuously on all available frequencies until a connection is made. Even devices with Wi-Fi seemingly turned off still send such requests, but at a slower rate. So set up Wi-Fi in a store and then start collecting these requests. This way, among other things, you can track the movements of individual shoppers. This way you can see which windows they stop at, which routes they follow within the store, how long it takes them to decide, and many other details, which can be used accordingly by commercial companies.
Using Wi-Fi tracking allows stores to track their customers’ movements and behaviors more accurately than is possible with video, especially in busy stores. Of course, video has the feature of facial recognition, but customers can also be identified with the Wi-Fi tracking method, since each device has a unique identifier that is transmitted by the requests it sends.
Does this notorious “personal data protection” actually exist? If you think it does, you are probably wrong. You should know that the information that “sees” the light of day is only what you let us see.
Source: secnews.gr
