Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On 09.09.17 11:42, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
Guy Gorton wrote:


But why do people let the world know where they are? Not using the
device is not enough, It has to be switched off to avoid tracking.
Mine is only switched on when I am willing to accept calls or need to
make a call. That only amounts to a small proportion of my waking
hours so it is more often off than on..



My phone OTOH is always on except when it has to be off, eg whilst driving
a train.

Do drivers have to completely switch off their mobiles when at work? Or
can you simply put them on silent or airplane mode?

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

"Anna Noyd-Dryver" wrote in message
...

Shopping malls have been doing a similar thing to send you "targetted
adverts" as you approach various shops.


'Send you' by what means?

Targeted ads via Facebook, Twitter, Google or any other apps on your phone
thgat have access to your location.

It's not necessary for you to have a 'phone switched on in order for you to
be tracked: Gatwick airport (a shopping mall if ever there was one) have a
system that does it all with CCTV and face recognition. It's all about
working out how long it takes people to get through the airport and the
places they visit on the way, especially for departures.

I visited a consumer technology exhibition at one of the clients I was
working at a few years ago. We were invited to stand in front of a camera
and watch on a nearby screen while a system worked our age, sex, social
class and other information, displaying the results next to our faces on the
screen. For me it was fairly close within a few seconds (certainly close
enough for targeting ads) and very accurate within a minute. I think the
other information included how we were feeling that day...

--
DAS

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

"D A Stocks" writes:

I visited a consumer technology exhibition at one of the clients I was
working at a few years ago. We were invited to stand in front of a
camera and watch on a nearby screen while a system worked our age,
sex, social class and other information, displaying the results next
to our faces on the screen. For me it was fairly close within a few
seconds (certainly close enough for targeting ads) and very accurate
within a minute. I think the other information included how we were
feeling that day...

I do not know if it is a permanent exhibit, but I saw this in the
Science Museum a few months ago. It was popular with am almost permanent
queue to 'have a go'.

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On 2017\09\09 10:48, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 09/09/2017 10:41, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:23:36 on Sat, 9 Sep
2017, Graeme Wall remarked:

I'm still trying to work out 18 different ways to travel between
the two by tube.

Â*Did you include Mornington Crescent? (Reverse at Camden Town.)

But, traditionally, invoking Mornington Crescent ends the journey.

Or in this case ends the game of trying to think of more odd routes.

Is this where I quote G K Chesterton?

Only if you want us to know what the hell you're talking about ;-)

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On Fri, 8 Sep 2017 16:07:44 +0100, Graeme Wall
wrote:

On 08/09/2017 14:03, Recliner wrote:

An evaluation of the trial, published today, shows that passengers used 18
routes to go between King’s Cross/St Pancras and Waterloo, the busiest
stations on the network, with 40 per cent of people who were tracked
failing to take the two fastest routes. The data showed that even within
stations a third of passengers did not use the quickest routes between
platforms and could be wasting up to two minutes.


I'm still trying to work out 18 different ways to travel between the two
by tube.

The Gizmodo article (which is far more detailed than the newspaper
reports) includes a diagram.

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/09/lon...ficial-report/

And it's not actually 18 different ways. It's 17 different ways that,
individually, have at least 0.1% of the journey traffic, plus
"others".

Mark

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On Fri, 8 Sep 2017 17:17:13 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 16:55:43 on
Fri, 8 Sep 2017, David Walters remarked:

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/09/lon...ficial-report/
has an extract of the report showing 18 diagrams. It's really 17 routes
and 'others'.

Interesting that 10x as many going via Baker St use the Bakerloo rather
than the Jubilee. Perceptions of the platform-concourse distances at
Waterloo, perhaps.

Also, did they redact trips made during moderate-serious disruption?

No, because that was part of the point - to see how disruption affects
people's travel patterns.

The Gizmodo article goes into a lot more detail than the various
newspaper reports, and answers many of the questions posed in this
thread :-)

Mark

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On Fri, 08 Sep 2017 13:03:37 GMT, Recliner
wrote:

From:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transport-for-london-may-track-commuters-via-phones-to-reduce-overcrowding-b0ss982j7?shareToken=d3406a5e9a7b95fb4dd49507b8be3 071


I don't think anybody's linked to it yet (at least, not in this
thread), but the full report is he

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/review-tfl-wifi-pilot.pdf

Also (and this has been mentioned, but I'll mention it again because
it's a much better write-up than most newspaper accounts), this
Gizmodo article describes the findings very well:

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/09/lon...ficial-report/

Mark

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On 09/09/2017 13:16, Graham Murray wrote:
Graeme Wall writes:

Shopping malls have been doing a similar thing to send you "targetted
adverts" as you approach various shops.

How effective is this? Maybe I am unusual, but when I am shopping my
phone is normally in my pocket, so I would not see these adverts. Apart
from incoming (phone) calls, the only time I would look at my phone in a
shopping mall is when sat in a coffee shop or restaurant.


I believe it has only happened in the States so far, but judging by the
number of young women one sees walking round with their smart phones
permanently in front of their faces, it has the potential to be quite
effective. Also I think the initial adverts are text messages so you
would hear an alert.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

Tube passengers tracked by phone WiFi
 

On 09/09/2017 14:22, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
Graeme Wall wrote:
On 09/09/2017 10:37, Someone Somewhere wrote:
On 08/09/2017 17:34, Sam Wilson wrote:
On 2017-09-08 14:40:46 +0000, Martin Coffee said:

On 08/09/17 15:00, Sam Wilson wrote:
On 2017-09-08 13:18:33 +0000, Martin Coffee said:

On 08/09/17 14:03, Recliner wrote:
[snip]
[TfL] said it was talking to the Information Commissioner’s Office
about its
plans and passengers could opt out by switching their wifi off. It
said
that the phone data was “de-personalised�, with nothing to identify
individuals.

The system works by using 1,070 wifi access points on the Tube
network.
They pick up on a code that identifies each phone, the media
access control
(MAC) address, and track them from point to point.

Each MAC address was “irreversibly� encrypted, TfL said. Prior to
encryption, a random code is added to each to ensure that the
phone cannot
be identified even if the encryption could be reversed. No
browsing data
was collected, meaning that emails and the internet habits of
passengers
could not be shared with third parties.
[snip]
Let's face it.Â* Even if encrypted, you cannot anonymise a MAC
address as it is unique to each phone.

You can turn it into something that can't be (realistically) turned
back into a MAC address that can be used to identify the
phone/tablet/laptop/whatever.

You don't have to turn the "anonymised" back to a MAC address to
de-anonymise the data.Â* You just encrypt a MAC address and identify
the location data in just the same manner as the tracking occurs.
Thus the location can still be re-associated with the original MAC
address.

Sure, if you know a particular MAC address and the encryption
procedure and access to the location data then you may be able (and I
note Dr B's comments in his response) to recreate the key and
therefore track the MAC address.Â* Most of us (and I again I bow to Dr
B) probably can't do that.

Surely the most likely people to want to do this would be criminals
anyway, so criminalising their activities seems slightly pointless.
Deterring casual peepers is probably worth doing.

Surely the problem is if this becomes widespread as eventually you'll
get enough data to identify not just the phone but the individual.

It's fine if it's kept to the tube,Â* but let's take the advertising
angle,Â* presumably the advertisers won't be satisfied with just knowing
what the busiest platform is but would prefer to target their adverts to
one or more groups of people on that platform.

By hooking up a similar system with retailers they work out that of the
group on the platform at 08:30 a significant proportion are e.g.
Waitrose shoppers.Â* And it then goes on and on until you end up pretty
much being able to identify the iindividual, what they buy, where they
live etc without actually ever using any personally identifiable
information.

I'm not sure of the relevant legislation but presumably the only way to
avoid this is that each entity having such a system has to have a
different algorithm (or at least key) for anonymising the MAC data so
each data set remains siloised (but would the supplier of the system
still be able to join the different datasets?)


Shopping malls have been doing a similar thing to send you "targetted
adverts" as you approach various shops.


'Send you' by what means?

SMS initially.


--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.