Tracking trouble
Published: 25 January, 2012
Mobile phone tracking is transforming people counting, but it raises serious privacy issues that could hamper its rollout if not handled with sensitivity.
The art – or science – of people counting has been a rather arcane subject for the past three decades, quietly evolving from a few bored students or retired ladies with hand-held clickers to video or radar technology. Over that period it bothered nobody but retailers and centre managers.
However over the past three months all that’s changed. New technology has pushed people counting into the spotlight and the subject has gained unwelcome publicity.
In the UK a Daily Mail headline screamed: “Shops are secretly tracking your every move by snooping on your mobile – WITHOUT asking permission”. And in the US Senator Charles E. Schumer requested the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the privacy implications of the new technology.
The company at the centre of this storm is Cosham-based Path Intelligence. Plenty of tech start-ups would jump at the chance of making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, but the company has unwittingly found itself in the middle of a media firestorm.
Path Intelligence’s Footpath technology tracks mobile telephone signals. With more than 95 per cent of shoppers now carrying a mobile this is an effective way of monitoring pedestrian flow and by installing sensors throughout a centre, and not just at the entrances, for the first time it allows centre managers to monitor the routes shoppers take around the centre.
The controversy began in the USA when Path Intelligence reached agreement with shopping centre landlord Forest City to monitor traffic at Promenade Temecula in Southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Virginia over the all-important holiday shopping period, running from ‘Black Friday’ – 25 November – through to New Year’s Day.
In accordance with its usual practice, Path Intelligence asked the landlord to put up posters in the malls explaining that it was monitoring mobile phone connections. But the move provoked protests from privacy and consumer rights campaigners and Forest City cancelled the trial in the face of the adverse publicity.
US Senator Charles E. Schumer – one of the USA’s most vocal consumer rights advocates – led the campaign. “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 said. “Personal cell phones are just that – personal. If retailers want to tap into your phone to see what your shopping patterns are, they can ask you for your permission to do so. It shouldn’t be up to the consumer to turn their cell phone off when they walk into the mall to ensure they aren’t being virtually tailed.”
And the senator asked the Federal Trade Commission to explore how this new technology fits into regulatory controls dealing with consumer privacy.
It was not long before the story crossed the Atlantic to the UK, where Path Intelligence counts Land Securities and Hammerson among its clients. The Daily Mail, Guardian, Telegraph and Scotsman have all run stories about the issue, some more inflammatory than others.
Path Intelligence CEO Sharon Biggar has been managing the media while still trying to grow her business. But she remains unrepentant, insisting the technology can bring real benefits to consumers.
“We will continue to emphasise the lengths that we go to to protect privacy and we will also continue to draw the analogy between the information that we provide and online analytics,” she explains. “In both the US and Europe there is a real concern that bricks and mortar stores are struggling to compete with online retailers. One of the reasons online retailers are performing so well and growing so fast, is because they are able to experiment and optimise their site based on direct feedback from shoppers and how shoppers are behaving on that site.
“We are seeking to level the playing field and bring that same depth of understanding on how shoppers are behaving to bricks and mortar stores. No one wants to see their local store go out of business and we will continue to show how our data can assist retailers in these difficult times.”
Biggar believes many of the perceived problems stem from a misunderstanding of the Footpath technology. The sensors pick up a unique identification code for each mobile phone connection. But crucially this is not the same as the telephone number, and it is not linked to the identity of the handset’s owner because the code changes every time the handset makes a new connection to the network.
And rather than tracking individual shoppers, Footpath provides centre owners and managers with aggregated data, usually describing pedestrian flows on an hourly basis.
“It is true that our service was misunderstood both by the US senator and by the US media,” Biggar says. “Unfortunately we were not able to speak with the senator directly before he released his press statement. That was unfortunate for we found that when we were able to speak directly to journalists they were more likely to represent our technology and the protection we give to consumers accurately in their reports.”
A case in point is the UK lobby group Big Brother Watch. Initially sceptical, the organisation now carries a qualified endorsement of Footpath’s privacy protection on its website.
“FootPath should be applauded for their efforts to publicise what is going on, and they have been open and honest in talking to Big Brother Watch about their work,” says Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles. “We have been assured that no personal information is collected, and that it is impossible to connect their data with the identity of handset owners, even at the request of the police.
“The company has reassured us that they only supply aggregate data on an hour-by-hour basis, and refuse to disclose individuals’ movements or provide real-time information.
“The FootPath technology being used in the UK is not capable of capturing personal information or sending communications to people’s phones. It is certainly not the kind of equipment used to track individuals over large distances, or capable of intercepting phone calls.”
But Pickles does sound a note of caution about the future evolution of tracking technology. “While these safeguards are to be welcomed, we would be far more comfortable with an opt-in system, as ultimately the details of your movements are personal information,” he says. “It is fair to argue that such a system would require the retention of personal information to prove consent, so would actually be a more serious intrusion on privacy, but as technology improves, those facilities will become more accessible, and consumers need to have faith that the law protects their privacy.
Uncertainty over when and how technology is being used only undermines trust and confidence in any system using mobile phones.”
So where is this technology likely to lead? The US-based technology research company Grizzly Analytics recently looked at the indoor location positioning market, and it found that the major players in mobile – Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, RIM, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others – are actively developing new location technologies that will work indoors.
Grizzly forecasts: “These technologies will revolutionise smartphone usage by enabling mapping, navigation, local search, check-ins, location-sharing and other location-based services to work indoors in malls, megastores, offices, airports and other big indoor places. Indoor location will also transform commerce, enabling searching for items on store shelves, sending deals and promotions to nearby customers, advertisements for nearby stores, and more.”
One of the companies featured in Grizzly’s study is Swedish-based Qubulus. The company’s founder, Ants Patrik Maran, says all of the existing technologies have flaws and the most effective solution is likely to emerge from a combination of existing technologies.
NFC – of Near-Field Communications – allows handsets to communicate with a base station but only over a distance of about 6ins. And so far it’s only available on a few dozen handsets out of the thousands on the market.
But Maran says: “It’s all about smarter transactions with lower transaction costs. It’s definitely coming in more and more smartphones, and by the end of 2012 it’ll be in feature phones as well.” But he warns that because of its restricted range its use as a location tool is limited. Bluetooth signals can be detected up to 100m, which makes them more useful, according to Maran.
As more malls install public wi-fi systems these too have potential for location positioning. But Maran estimates that to date only 50 per cent of handsets are wi-fi enabled.
And in the USA Simon malls have implemented a system called Shopkick. Consumers are incentivised with special offers to install the Shopkick app on their smartphones. This then recognises a signal, broadcast on an inaudible sound frequency throughout the mall, and contacts the network to confirm that the handset is indeed in that particular location. A million users signed up in the first six months.
However, Maran warns that even at this level apps have relatively low usage, and because they are only attractive or accessible to certain demographics there is a risk that they produce skewed data.
One company that is already actively tracking mobile phones is RapidBlue Solutions, based in Finland.
The company is already the leader in visitor tracking in the Nordic region and it is actively looking to expand in the UK. Its technology works by tracking the Bluetooth signal and, according to RapidBlue’s CEO Gavin Weigh, this has some advantages over tracking the mobile phone signal as Footpath does.
“A Bluetooth system talks to the network every seven seconds, while the mobile phone signal only does this every seven minutes,” he explains. “Also it’s a lower-cost option. It’s lower-cost technology and this can be passed on to the customer.”
But Weigh recognises that RapidBlue could face similar privacy concerns to Path Intelligence, and he is determined to turn this potential problem into an advantage. “The controversy is nothing but a good thing,” he says. “Privacy has to be protected and the Bluetooth system allows that.”
Shoppers who don’t wish to be detected by RapidBlue’s sensors can simply disable the Bluetooth connection on their phone, and since late 2011 RapidBlue has offered another option – customers can opt out by registering their details on the company’s website and from then on the sensors will simply ignore their phone.
A criticism that has been levelled at Bluetooth counting in the past is that a large number of shoppers routinely have their Bluetooth disabled, which means that the customer count is inaccurate and potentially skewed towards certain demographics.
RapidBlue used TNS Global, the worldwide leader in retail research, to check its methodology and it found that, with a typical count of 20,000 shoppers a month at each centre it serves, the sample was large enough to be statistically valid. In terms of demographics, men are slightly more prone to have a live Bluetooth signal than women, but RapidBlue can adjust its data for this, or present clients with unadjusted date according to their preference.
Weigh concedes that one of the reasons shoppers switch off Bluetooth is because it is a drain on phone batteries. But he says the new Bluetooth standard – called Bluetooth Low Energy – will obviate this problem. “It’s playing into our hands,” he says.
In the UK RapidBlue has recently signed its first major client with a nationwide portfolio of regional shopping malls. “We’re in the ramp-up phase and we’re winning praise from the people that matter – the owners and the research companies,” Weigh concludes.
