The FTC managed to take legal action against a startup from New York (Nomi Technologies) which insidiously monitors the movements of Americans in stores through the Wi-Fi signals of their smartphones.
The FTC regulator has published one PDF at the end of 2013 that said the company Nomi Technologies infringed the law without informing buyers in advance.
Nomi spy service is used by retail chains (usually Super Markets) to analyze some data. Administrators were able to locate all customers using mobile devices with Nomi Wi-Fi hotspots at all stores and record their location.
Buyers (customers) are identified by the MAC addresses of their gadgets. The points that gathered most of the data from the shelves. corridors, or even outdoors, were very useful to shopkeepers, as they told them how long their customers stopped, and the number of people walking in front of a shop window without entering.
From January to September 2013, Nomi's technology collected registrations from nine millions mobile devices. By October of that year, the company had 45 customers using the technology.
Nomi says it tries to anonymize clients by passing MAC addresses through a hash function, but because each address always produces the same hash, each buyer is more or less unique to the company's database.
Nomi reported that she accepted the request from the FTC, claiming that an opt-out mechanism is needed for those who still believe that privacy exists on this planet (!).
The FTC claims in its official complaint that Americans should be able to choose and opt out of spying on a websiteσελίδα of Nomi Technologies that contains the MAC addresses of their devices.
"Nomi acts and practices constitute unlawful or fraudulent acts and practices that affect commercial transactions in violation of Article 5 (a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act," the FTC said.
