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Monitored Customers

November 11, 2013

In the US, retailers are using digital analysis tools for market research. Several software companies and department stores are using cameras and mobile phone signals to track down their customers with centimeter precision.

https://p.dw.com/p/1AFU1
The digital age makes total customer surveillance possible. Every smartphone can be identified and traced if the WiFi antenna is switched on. Cameras with facial recognition and thermal imaging detectors register what items customers stop at and where they look. The companies have no scruples when it comes to surveillance. Customers are supposedly only tracked anonymously. Despite that, data protection specialists are sounding the alarm: scarcely any business informs its customers that they're being monitored.