Soofa’s digital kiosks seem innocuous, providing you with some information in addition to some ads.However, these kiosks are popping up all over the United States, allowing you Mobile phone information and location data Whenever you go up to them and sell them to local governments and advertisers, the first thing that gets reported is nbc boston on Monday.
“At Soofa, we have developed the first pedestrian impression sensor that measures accurate foot traffic in real time,” says a page on the website. Company website. “Soofa advertisers can check their analytics dashboard at any time to see how their campaigns are tracking impression goals.”
While data tracking is common online, it’s becoming increasingly common in the real world. Every time you pass a Soofa kiosk, it collects your phone’s unique identifier (MAC address), manufacturer and signal strength. This allows it to track anyone walking within a specific, unspecified range. It then creates a dashboard that it shares with advertisers and local governments to show analytics on how many people are walking and interacting with its billboards.
This could provide local cities with new ways to understand how people are using public spaces and how many people are reading notices posted on these digital kiosks. However, it also provides local governments with detailed information about how people move through society and raises questions about how this data is used.
Local civil rights groups are trying to stop the sale of location data. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts warns that these data sets can often fall into the wrong hands and can help identify when people are near sensitive locations, such as abortion clinics or protests.
“Today, data brokers can buy this information, repackage it, and sell it to anyone with a credit card,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. Blog Post. “There are no state or federal laws prohibiting this practice.”
A Soofa spokesperson said in an email to Gizmodo that it does not share data with any third parties and only provides the dashboard to organizations that purchase the kiosk. The company also claims that it anonymizes your MAC address when it reaches advertisers and local governments.
However, Soofa also tells advertisers how to effectively Use your location dataon its website. It noted that advertisers could track when you approach a physical billboard or kiosk in the real world based on location data. Advertisers can then use cookies to send you more digital ads. While Soofa didn’t invent the technology, it does seem to be popularizing it.
Data tracking practices are becoming increasingly common in real-life advertising, and many of them are far worse than what Soofa did. Digital billboards are known to track the people who pass by them, similar to online advertisers, to see how effective their ads are. However, these tools now appear to be used by local governments and are becoming increasingly common in the real world.