Targeted advertising is going way beyond the desktop in London by using recycling bins to detect Wi-Fi signals to be used for gathering information from specific individuals in order to serve them ads.
The company Renew claims that the recycling bins do not specifically know who these individuals are they can tell a lot more than you think. The bins can determine the owner’s route, how fast as well as what direction they are walking in, the phone’s manufacturer and model, and whether or not that same smartphone owner passes by again either the next day or later that month. Pretty crazy considering people are not being notified of this as they aimlessly walk the streets on London. If you have you Wi-Fi on your most likely going to be tracked but if you would not like to be apart of it you’d have to go on the website and manually opt out. How do you feel about people going to such far lengths for advertising ?
One hundred of the bins, which sported digital screens on which advertisers can buy space, were installed in London leading into the 2012 summer Olympics. Recently, Renew upgraded a dozen of them with devices that can detect the unique identification numbers of any passing smartphone that has Wi-Fi switched on.
