Density.io

http://www.density.io

by jordanmessina • 12 years ago

200 185 12 years ago

jofer• 12 years ago

Now that's cool!

If anyone knows or can say: What physical principle(s) is the sensor operating on? There doesn't seem to be much information on that (possibly deliberately).

pron2• 12 years ago

My guess is that it's counting cellphones (based on some RF signature). It probably fingerprints the phones, too, because they claim they can track people across different businesses.

jordanmessina4• 12 years ago

Here's a video of a recent pitch where we explain the technology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA#t=4198s

We're working on more than just wifi as well.

pron2• 12 years ago

So it only counts people that count ;) Just kidding witchya – best of luck!

chrisfarms3• 12 years ago

Risky. MAC address tracking is definitely a legal 'grey area' at the moment. I can imagine mining/fingerprinting in this way could easily become illegal in the not-to-distant future.

In the UK, City of London already banned the wifi-enabled bins that were tracking MAC addresses.

It would be really easy to tie a name to MAC address (from point of purchase with a credit card), then see exactly where that person went via the 'sharing' of data with other retailers. This is certainly something you would expect to need 'opt in' to.

alexandros• 12 years ago

They didn't really "ban" anything. They just instructed the company that was hosting them to stop doing so, in the face of a media shitstorm. And since that company was also a licensee of the City, they saw it fit to do as told. A shop owner in the City can still do as they like.

[source: I was doing other work for the bin company (renew) and saw the whole car crash from the inside]

chrisfarms3• 12 years ago

You are of course quite right. It wasn't a ban in any legal sense. Though I do think it highlights that the method is already frowned upon... and as and when the public becomes more aware of the fact they are walking around broadcasting their location there will be more pressure to restrict the collection of the data.

That said. CCTV does not appear to be going anywhere, and there is very little difference between processing video footage to track people and tracking a MAC address. The only difference in this particular case is that 'sharing' of the data between retailers is touted as a feature (which of course it is).

dmix• 12 years ago

CSEC (Canada's NSA) caused a huge controvery for tracking MAC addresses of individuals from Airports to Coffee Shops/Libraries/any public wifi

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/csec-used-airport-wi-fi-to-t...

They used the wifi purchase at the airport to ID the user. They are likely already vacuuming up MAC addresses everywhere they can.

throwaway067432• 12 years ago

I have heard of a company that does this, which recorded 3 million active devices in a month -- 10% of Canada's population. Data includes, tracking people's movement through subways. CSEC is not the only party to worry about here. I am sure Google has comparable location info as well.

shiftpgdn3• 12 years ago

City of Houston does MAC address tracking on the freeways and surface streets to power their traffic tracking measures. It's probably used in hundreds of other places you haven't thought about. If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off.

http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/

parennoob2• 12 years ago

If you're concerned about your privacy just turn wifi off.

No, you shouldn't have to turn off a very commonly used service so that people can do better business by tracking it in an intrusive manner. Privacy should be the default option in such programs.

If the city used a ton of cameras + facial recognition to track you and your car everywhere and then sold that data to companies so they could optimize for whatever meaningless metric, would you still be as casual about this, and go "Oh, you should just cover your face and walk everywhere if you expect privacy."?

rsync• 12 years ago

... or you could just alter your MAC address to something non personally identifiable (00:00:00....) ... possibly rotating random ones, or whatever.

The point is, this is trivially defeated without turning wifi off.

tracker1• 12 years ago

Does this still work when you disable wifi on your phone?

adamfeldman• 12 years ago

I live in Houston and never knew how it worked. I assumed they only used the toll tags. It's actually not wifi, but rather bluetooth: http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/bluetooth/transtar_blueto.... I am not sure if the bluetooth radio on the phones uses a different MAC than the wifi radio.

dfc2• 12 years ago

The Houston system uses bluetooth, not 802.11.

beejiu• 12 years ago

There are 500,000 CCTV cameras in London, and we are concerned about a few hundred advert-bins counting how many people are nearby...

Rafert• 12 years ago

Something similar caused a stir in the Netherlands as well, a month ago certain electronics stores where caught using wifi and bluetooth tracking alongside IR cameras. The Dutch Data Protection Authority said customers should be informed and have a possibility to opt-out, while the State Secretary of Security and Justice commented that people should turn off their wifi or bluetooth if they do not want to be tracked.

Source: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=...

nickporter2• 12 years ago

It would be really easy to tie a name to MAC address (from point of purchase with a credit card).

How would you do it?

fennecfoxen• 12 years ago

Well, it's easy from the data point of view. You basically have two data sources: (location, time, credit card) and (location, time, MAC). The location/timestamp history of any given individual is one of the most unique pieces of data you can have; correlating the two is a trivial data-science exercise.

It's the systems-integration part, moving the data from the card swipe onto the right computer, that's actually hard. You might be able to partner with your payment processor to get at that stuff.

aleem2• 12 years ago

At first when I saw this page, I thought they count the number of people in a store through an eye-tracking device or facial recognition. This isn't too far off.

In version 3.0 we will be seeing the ability to identify shoppers who are on a shopping spree by ringing a beep as they enter the store. Sad.

chrischen2• 12 years ago

I built a device similar to this (with a raspberry pi). iOS from 7 and up no longer allows getting mac addresses... so it's much harder to tie a mac addresses to actual purchases. You'd have to do some sort of collaborative filtering over tons of visits to reliably tie purchases to a mac address.

Xorlev• 12 years ago

Where's their opt out?

jordanmessina4• 12 years ago

Since we haven't officially launched yet we hadn't posted our official opt out form. Definitely an oversight on our part, wanted to get you something as soon as possible: https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/

We're adding it to the site now.

adregan• 12 years ago

I guess you always have the option of turning off wifi.

icebraining5• 12 years ago

"We're working on more than just wifi as well."

albertsun4• 12 years ago

This is a privacy nightmare.

Perhaps wifi devices should no longer provide constant MAC addresses....

chrisfarms3• 12 years ago

Or rename "Airplane mode" to "Shopping mode"

teleclimber• 12 years ago

Seriously. I'm thinking it's time I set up my phone to turn off wifi whenever I am away from home.

But would that even be the end of it? With Wifi off the phone is still broadcasting on cellular channels. Could a device be built that listened to those signals and uniquely identify them?

paulgb3• 12 years ago

What's the advantage to a constant MAC address anyway? There must be a reason for it, but my first reaction to this article was to see if I could change mine.

aroch• 12 years ago

Network's that whitelist devices by MAC and device registration/provisioning by MAC. And debugging network is theoretically easier when every device has a unique MAC.

There are several applications for OSX and various *nix distros that run at boot and randomize MACs. SpoofMac is probably the most well known: https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC

jcampbell1• 12 years ago

You often get reassigned the same ip address. This is nice for things like port forwarding. I am not sure this is enough of a reason.

hobbes300• 12 years ago

Collision avoidance mostly.

jws• 12 years ago

At the link level, your MAC is your unique address.

First: You do not want a MAC collision. I have worked with hardware that sometimes picked a non-unique MAC and your life gets really weird and sucks away a lot of debugging time to find out why impossible things are happening.

Continuing – It made ethernet easy to implement. They could have added some complicated address negotiation protocol and then handled address collisions when partitioned networks healed, but it was "olden times" and something that complicated would not have gained traction.

Fast forward to Wi-Fi. The reason you have Wi-Fi instead of any number of other wireless ideas that died is because it looks like ethernet so people didn't have to think much about it, so you inherit that baggage.

If you really want to change your MAC address then you will want to make sure you aren't going to collide with anyone else. The odds are tiny, but it would be rude to ruin their day. Fortunately, there is a locally administered range of MAC addresses. If your first octet's last digit is 2, 6, a, or e then you are a locally administered unicast address. Assuming your network segment doesn't have an administrator actively handing out local addresses, drop 56 random bits in the remaining octets, cross your fingers, and bring up your network stacks.

huhtenberg2• 12 years ago

And how do you feel about Google Analytics?

albertsun4• 12 years ago

How do you feel about metaphors with obvious flaws?

xauronx2• 12 years ago

I'm confused why it's a privacy nightmare. They could just as easily sit someone there and count how many people are in a store and write it down. Your face is an identifier. I don't get why people think that anything technological anymore is instantly privacy nightmare. For an often technological website there is so much technophobia.

zaroth• 12 years ago

The difference is one of precision, scale, and duration.

Also in terms of cost, there's a difference between tracking which imposes a marginal human cost of production versus tracking which can be fully automated by machine, even if there is still a per-machine cost.

A relevant example is the Supreme Court ruling on needing a warrant for using a GPS tracker on a car versus just tailing them.

fudged71• 12 years ago

The difference is that this is equivalent to having that person follow you to the next business you shop at... and the one after that... and the one after that...

highace• 12 years ago

This is really clever. So it's like Google Analytics (or any analytics) for your brick and mortar business. This is the kind of stuff I love to read about and see being developed, it makes a refreshing change from yet another javascript framework or social network for your pets.

paulgb3• 12 years ago

They're not the first; Path Intelligence tried it in 2007: http://techcrunch.com/2007/12/14/path-intelligence-monitors-...

allan_• 12 years ago

are .io domains still so hipster, that you just drop em somewhere and people klick on it?

CSDude• 12 years ago

In this flat, rectangular world, I have liked your flat, but curvy rectangles in common card UI.

soithrewitaway• 12 years ago

Before you say more, check euclidanalytics.com. The creator of Google Analytics has been working on this, with funding, for a number of years already.

I had seen news about this recently and am surprised that more people didn't notice how it is essentially the same, without funding, and less developed.

jroes• 12 years ago

I've actually seen a crude version of something like this on a trip to Taiwan a couple of years ago. I was at a mall and I noticed a wifi network called "People Counter." I wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with it, but I assumed it was counting MAC addresses.

skrowl• 12 years ago

Why are posts allowed that just have the site's URL as the entire post title?

dangrossman• 12 years ago

The post title is the same as the page title, which is what you're expected to submit.

sp0rk• 12 years ago

I imagine HN would just scrape the title automatically if that's the low standard that's been set for headlines here. The "title" field is presumably there so that people can enter something more descriptive.

tomasien3• 12 years ago

Met these this last week, they're absolutely incredible and they understand their market really well. They take privacy incredibly seriously and they've built a product that can change the industry.

uptown2• 12 years ago

"They take privacy incredibly seriously"

What does that even mean? They're tracking not only the number of people in a location, but where they go ... then sharing that with their customers. From their own website:

Understand your business in the context of others:

1. Who you share customers with.

2. Where else your loyal customers love to go.

3. Where foot traffic in the city is trending.

How is that respecting my privacy?

jordanmessina4• 12 years ago

Definitely understand your concerns. In the system you're an anonymous datapoint. The information can't be used to determine who a specific individual is.

tomasien3• 12 years ago

You're just an anonymous datapoint in their system, and they've actually done a lot to make sure this always stays the case.

aleem2• 12 years ago

Sounds like public-relations-101 speak. Same as big oil advertising green initiatives. They can counteract sentiment with PR but they can't change who they are: a company that tracks buyers without consent.

"You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." [1]

  [1] http://paulgraham.com/cornpone.html

warrenmiller• 12 years ago

sounds very similar to this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 which was shut down.

icebraining5• 12 years ago

It might be different since those were in public places, and not in shops.

Sprint3• 12 years ago

How are you going to restrain the signals to inside the shop?

Robin_Message4• 12 years ago

This idea is cool, but there are some issues with their privacy claim.

They say they are hashing the MAC address (presumably on the device). However, they can't be salting the hash (else they wouldn't be able to match across different stores).

Since there is no salt (or a fixed salt), it is trivial to de-anonymise a specific MAC address (just hash it and see if any server has it).

Worse, there are only 46 bits that are variable in a MAC address, and there is structure in there (3 bytes manufacturer, 3 bytes serial), so a complete mapping from MACs to the hashed MAC is very doable.

A secret per-device key for a HMAC would preserve privacy much better, but would stop them doing the cool stuff they plan — the usual trade off.

albertsun4• 12 years ago

There's no point in trying to assess any privacy claims they make — it's not a technological thing. The only value they offer is violating people's privacy.

MPetitt2• 12 years ago

The only value they offer is violating people's privacy. I don't think reading a value being freely broadcast by a person in your building is an invasion of privacy, how is this any different from having security cameras with audio or anything else. Saying you have privacy to something you are broadcasting in public, even more specifically in this case a privately owned building is a little daft. Do you think it's an invasion of privacy if someone writes down your name and address if you were yelling it in the middle of a Starbucks?

silvertonia• 12 years ago

why not salt and store the salt with the hash?

Robin_Message4• 12 years ago

That seems like it would work, but it turns into a "open using crowbar found inside" problem: how do I know to use the same salt on a second density.io device unless I have already matched the MAC address.

billyhoffman• 12 years ago

The whole point is the customers in your store have nothing on there phones. Their device simply sucking down the MAC that is broadcast. They are going to get the unprotected MAC.

yread• 12 years ago

You could salt the hash with a constant secret

Robin_Message4• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law – I can't tell if this is a serious suggestion or not...

In case it is, a HMAC (which a salted hash effectively is, except keys are secret) helps in the case of them losing the database, but not if they also lose the key, and the NSA will get access to the key as well as the database, so it won't help there.

650REDHAIR2• 12 years ago

This is creepy. I will actively avoid stores that use this.

icebraining5• 12 years ago

How will you know?

650REDHAIR2• 12 years ago

I guess I have to start looking towards outlets. I wonder if there is any other way to 'protect' yourself?

agentultra• 12 years ago

Has there been any work on developing and commercializing personal RF "firewalls?" I'd buy one in an instant to block intrusive tech like this.

buro92• 12 years ago

Have you seen the Off Pocket? https://offpocket.com/

Though in the UK I have unlimited 4G for £20 per month, so I just leave WiFi permanently disabled.

porker• 12 years ago

Is Off Pocket any different to putting your phone in airplane mode every time you put it in your pocket?

It's certainly more convenient, but also harder on the battery life as the phone continues to search for a signal.

untog• 12 years ago

I was under the impression they were not entirely legal. I recall a movie theater saying they were going to install a 'deadzone' only to find out they weren't able to.

icebraining5• 12 years ago

It probably depends on whether they're using active jamming or passive signal blocking. And the jurisdiction, of course.

pfraze• 12 years ago

Great execution, completely unethical

reddit_clone3• 12 years ago

Looks like I need to turn off WiFi (or Airplane Mode) when I leave home.

People need to know about this and it should be an opt in!

This is why we can't have nice things.

jayvanguard• 12 years ago

Definitely creepy.

thefreeman• 12 years ago

If you have Wifi disabled on your device will they still be able to pull your MAC?

droob• 12 years ago

Don't surveil your customers. It's creepy.

adamio• 12 years ago

Most businesses have video cameras

reddit_clone3• 12 years ago

Well at least the cameras have stated purpose of preventing theft and possibly solving crimes.

Also Cameras are fairly visible.

This tech is stealthy and most people won't have any idea that this is actually happening.

80• 12 years ago

I wonder if the market for 'dumbphones' will increase as/if this sort of thing becomes more common? Probably not, but it's fun to think about. I know Nokia are still making bare-bones, extra-long-life models aimed at developing countries (eg the 105, 220).

holgersindbaek• 12 years ago

Awesome product.

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

I'm seeing people talking about MAC address issues.

But how does this device work exactly? Is every phone throwing around a mac address, even if it's not trying to connect to wifi?

For example I have my phone set to use 3G expect on my home network. Would I count?

dublinben• 12 years ago

If wifi is enabled, your device is still constantly searching for your home AP. That reveals your MAC address.

cr3ative• 12 years ago

I'm making an assumption about your phone, but it is probably broadcasting packets every now and then saying "Hello, is mrfusion's home network in range?" - and that packet has your MAC on it, and can be picked up by other devices.

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

Could a device like this use bluetooth instead of wifi / mac address?

Or for that matter could it somehow look at cell signals?

nathos• 12 years ago

Euclid discusses this on their blog: http://blog.euclidelements.com/2013/07/why-wi-fi-is-right-ap...

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

By the way, I'd love something like this for the gym.

I'd like to check if it's too crowded before I decide to go or not.

I guess for any kind of business with lines or waiting rooms, (banks, ATMS, restaurants) customers might appreciate a way to quickly gauge the crowd level before going.

Sprint3• 12 years ago

No need for such a perverted privacy violation, the shop could just install a door step counter like they are commonly used already. Then you would have the information how many people are currently in the store.

jamiequint• 12 years ago

Everyone here seems to be complaining about the anonymous tracking, which isn't really an issue for "normals". Its a relatively useless complaint too as that data already exists in the credit card network.

The real issue with this is that most SMBs are unsophisticated when it comes to the technology stack they use. I saw this firsthand in many ways working at Swipely (swipely.com) as we figured out product market fit. While things like 'see where else your customers shop' might seem like an interesting feature from an outsiders perspective, the businesses don't actually care. They often barely have the bandwidth to worry about their own customers.

moogleii• 12 years ago

Exactly, this is basically a physical manifestation of what google already does with your online presence.

geuis• 12 years ago

Did I miss something with the video? It plays an interview between pg and Calacanis that's 2 hours long.

stickydink• 12 years ago

#t=4198s

legec• 12 years ago

Mental note : before your next hold up, remember to turn off your smartphone ...

Sprint3• 12 years ago

Time to build a device that pollutes the databases with useless data.

kej• 12 years ago

No need to build anything, just use an existing device that can change its wifi MAC address.

larholm• 12 years ago

How about an app for rooted Android phones?

'Click here to transmit 802.11* broadcasts with randomized MAC'

nwh4• 12 years ago

Keep in mind that these "anonymous" data points aren't. Your phones MAC address exposes your home wifi network thanks to Google's databases. They also expose where you work, where your friends houses are, what your favorite coffee shop is. This is beyond dangerous, it's completely unacceptable.

tzakrajs• 12 years ago

I am confused where you are linking MAC addresses of phones with MAC addresses of home wireless routers.

nwh4• 12 years ago

Your devices broadcast the names of networks it has seen recently in frequent intervals. "Yo HomeWiFI you there" essentially. Anybody listening can then correlate them with Googles database to find out detailed information about the user. Usually people have a huge list of connected networks which will be announced and give huge information about the user. "MIT" SSID? Probably a student then.

timmaah• 12 years ago

unacceptable on which end? The coffee shop collecting the info or your phone exposing it?

nwh4• 12 years ago

Google shouldn't have collected the data, devices shouldn't be announcing previously connected networks, and this awful privacy destroying system shouldn't exist.

josephlord• 12 years ago

I'm OK with the measuring traffic volumes using this method but I'm uncomfortable with the identifying information being stored without permission.

If they provided incentives to install an app/visit a website to register for rewards or be entered into a prize in return for allowing density.io to track you that would be acceptable.

pbreit• 12 years ago

Shouldn't something like Leap Motion be able to do this (for one store at least) and without the privacy concerns?

deutronium• 12 years ago

Interesting idea, but wouldn't you get better coverage of people using GSM addresses, rather than Wifi MAC addresses?

Also it could be rather easily tricked by competitors, by constantly switching the MAC address.

rokhayakebe2• 12 years ago

To everyone screaming about privacy, RELAX, this is opt-in.

finnn4• 12 years ago

Where does it say that? And how long until it's not?

_derko2• 12 years ago

https://density.wufoo.com/forms/density-opt-out/

rokhayakebe2• 12 years ago

I watched their LAUNCH video where the founder states this.

ynniv• 12 years ago

I hadn't realized how trackable cell phones were until I was experimenting on a wifi project and saw both MAC addresses and Preferred Network List of devices within the area that had not joined my network. Cell phone wifi is a privacy nightmare. Even the most technical people don't realize this, so projects that popularize it are going to kick up huge amounts of mud. Think of how easy it is to identify "whale" clients, if not by direct tracking, then by revenue correlation (these N people were present for $N,NNN,NNN in revenue events). They're valuable to track because when they show up you want your sales people to be at their best, but a service that starts tracking those people is going to make real enemies quickly.

simpsond• 12 years ago

While I understand the concern about tracking peoples presence with phones, I don't feel like this is new. The cellular companies can track location, and it's already happening.

slackpad• 12 years ago

Are there any good apps for location-aware WiFi toggling? I rarely use WiFi outside of home or work so I'd like it to turn itself off to avoid stuff like this.

petercooper• 12 years ago

Apparently Nordstrom did an experiment with this for a while - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper... - even going as far as monitoring passing traffic so you could monitor the percentage of people passing who actually come into the store. This could be pretty fascinating in the context of running certain types of window displays, sales/offers, etc, and lead to ecommerce-style split testing and the like. It says they stopped the experiment partly due to people whining though, but I imagine it'll just go 'under the radar' in future since it could be too valuable not to try.

dgavey• 12 years ago

Ok so this system works by tracking MAC addresses. I assume the same sort of system using cameras and facial recognition would work too, and you can't turn off your face. I assume this must be already happening somewhere.

The amount of privacy we think we have must be a small fraction of what we actually have.

plusbryan• 12 years ago

Without wishing to belittle the privacy concerns of my fellow HNers, I wonder how long it will take for people to just be ok with being tracked in this way? This seems like one of those social changes that feels strange and uncomfortable at first, but over time becomes the accepted norm.

alexcroox• 12 years ago

In the same way we are tracked with Cookies across the web, I don't see the difference.

lloeki2• 12 years ago

People already have dozen of loyalty cards, and throw their email at every point of sale, which are handled in a centralized way behind the scene by a few actors.

Also, people log in with Facebook to basically anything.

"it's free" and "get cool rebates" create such an incredible variant of SEP field[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEP_field#Fiction

rlx0x• 12 years ago

It pains me if I see someone describing the slow and gradual installment of the total surveillance world and the loss of any privacy as just something "that feels strange and uncomfortable at first". I for one will never be okay with it! and I know a LOT of people that are against loosing civil liberties too (even if the likes of you don't care!).

Ofcourse I know that my smartphone broadcasts its mac/stored-essids every few seconds, thats why I have wifi disabled most of the time. Most people don't realize that, most people also don't realize the tracking capabilities of cookies. Laws in EU have begun to make it illegal to store cookies without the users consent, because even though its technically possible to block cookies, most people have no idea about that. So I can only hope that it will become one day illegal to violate peoples privacy like that!

chrischen2• 12 years ago

Commercial Wifi routers already do retail traffic analysis.

https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2013/12/get-a-visual-on-your-b...

So people are probably already being tracked... and no one has noticed.

blargle2• 12 years ago

There are multiple companies doing this at scale in the United States. It's a passive process. Good luck spotting it.

circa• 12 years ago

my density has bought me to you

zbruhnke• 12 years ago

The funny part to me is that people think this is new. Companies like Euclid have literally been doing this for a couple of years(and quite successfully I might add) http://euclidanalytics.com/

Not only is it not new, its probably not going away.

PaulHoule• 12 years ago

I gotta try this out when I'm wearing my wearable Hadoop cluster ;-)

fiatjaf3• 12 years ago

What is the percentage of people who always leave wifi enabled? I turn mine off every time I finish using it.

Schwolop• 12 years ago

From their launch conf pitch, they did an experiment in a stadium with an attendance figure of 20000 and found 71% of attendees had a phone with wifi enabled. No idea if that audience is representative, but it seems plausible to me.

nickporter2• 12 years ago

If you want to build one of these, check out this library: http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy

fiatjaf3• 12 years ago

Thanks, I've just asked this in another comment.

fiatjaf3• 12 years ago

What do I need to do to build my own version of this device? Can I do it with any router? A Raspberry Pi?

blargle2• 12 years ago

http://br1.einfach.org/tech/horst/

telecuda• 12 years ago

Am I correct to assume that the hardware/device piece is similar to a Pineapple (https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/wifi-pineapple)?

As I understand it, the device is like a WiFi Router looking for nearby clients broadcasting their MAC. Since phones have the ability of turning themselves into WiFi Hotspots, could a phone/app offer this same capability, or is it missing a hardware piece that lives in Density/Pineapple?

13throwaway• 12 years ago

Do devices broadcast their MAC adress when looking for an AP? Do devices encytpt their MAC when they are connected to an AP?

I want a phone that randomizes the MAC every time it connects to an AP.

d23• 12 years ago

I thought this was a SaaS for dentistry (somehow) and I was going to be excited since it's been a while since I've gone to the dentist.

matthewmacleod• 12 years ago

Pretty good execution. We recently build something pretty similar for keeping track of who was in our office and where they were (partial write-up here: http://matthewmacleod.co.uk/blog/passive-wifi-tracking.html) - strictly opt-in, but we still had to wrestle with the privacy implications.

Problem is, this is a really effective and totally passive system with great benefits. But privacy-wise, it's scary.

WillKirkby• 12 years ago

Anyone else thinking this looks a bit like Brendan O'Connor's CreepyDOL?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFA6lew2tcE

sturmeh• 12 years ago

Density's worst enemy is this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.p... :)

obiefernandez• 12 years ago

Placemeter offers a substantially similar product that works based on strategically placed small cameras and machine intelligence. It recognizes individuals coming in and out of a retail location based on what they look like. Pretty cool technology and the founders were part of my Techstars class.

http://placemeter.com

Density.io

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