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Common Highway Billboards Tracking You !


Monroe

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It only gets worse ... maybe time to keep the phone turned off ... but then it's not ready to use for a 911 emergency.

 

 

See That Billboard? It May See You, Too

 

By SYDNEY EMBER

 

FEB. 28, 2016

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/business/media/see-that-billboard-it-may-see-you-too.html?_r=0

 

Pass a billboard while driving in the next few months, and there is a good chance the company that owns it will know you were there and what you did afterward.

 

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has tens of thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones.

 

By aggregating the trove of data from these companies, Clear Channel Outdoor hopes to provide advertisers with detailed information about the people who pass its billboards to help them plan more effective, targeted campaigns. With the data and analytics, Clear Channel Outdoor could determine the average age and gender of the people who are seeing a particular billboard in, say, Boston at a certain time and whether they subsequently visit a store.

 

more at link ...

 

 

 

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And that is exactly why, I do not own one of those retched things. I actually do reluctantly have a very cheap Tracfone now that I only use on large trips...but it's not attached to my name or anything. But the sheeple love their mobile toys so they won't ditch them, they'll just complain that they're being tracked instead of just getting smart and getting rid of those things.

 

And these billboards...are those those ones that change on their own because it's some sort of display panel? How do those work? I can only imagine how much electricity it consumes if it doesn't use solar energy...

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I dug up some more information on the billboard thing. As for myself, I just find it hard to believe that someone traveling at 50 miles an hour can be "seen" or have their phone ID on record just passing a billboard but I guess it can happen that fast and at a distance.

 

What about many vehicles rapidly going by all at once (rush hour traffic) ... the system can sort all the phones out ? ... what about three or four people in one car, all with phones ... who gets tracked?

 

I suppose if you live in the country and travel old country roads ... with no phone ... but then there are drones hovering around.

 

This is from the article below:

 

"In the United States of America, billboards now see you. Or at least they see certain data from your mobile phone — age, gender, and location — which they can then sell to advertisers."

 

also ... just for walking around with a phone on and certain apps installed, it will be more than billboards tracking a person. They used the term "enhanced billboards".

 

... also from the article below:

 

"In some cases, Clear Channel will be able to track whether someone who views a billboard ends up accessing the product advertised. If a mobile user has installed the Placed app on their phone, and he or she passes a billboard for a new bar in town, the app will know and be able to report whether the user ever ends up trying the place out.

 

The plan may sound sketchy, but considering the enhanced billboards go on sale Monday in Clear Channel’s 11 major markets, including Los Angeles and New York, it appears to be inevitable. The company plans to open sales to the rest of the country soon as well, meaning the age of billboards that only look one way is effectively over. Now, billboards will always look back at you.

 

Radar also signals the possibility that this strategy may soon be coming to other forms of advertisements including bus stops, signs and city streets. If the data is easily accessible, it would probably pay for the owner of the advertisement to know it."

 

 

Billboards to Begin Tracking Viewer Locations, Selling Data to Advertisers

Radar is the first billboard software that looks back.

 

Adam Toobin

February 29, 2016

 

https://www.inverse.com/article/12141-billboards-to-begin-tracking-viewer-locations-selling-data-to-advertisers

 

In the United States of America, billboards now see you. Or at least they see certain data from your mobile phone — age, gender, and location — which they can then sell to advertisers.

 

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, an advertising company with thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce its plan, called Radar, to begin tracking information from passing mobile phones on Monday, reports The New York Times.

 

The company is only planning to record demographic data about users in the aggregate, meaning it is disassociated from any unique personal data. So in theory, Radar won’t be able to tell advertisers you’re on a road trip across the country after seeing you jet across the Midwest. There are, however, plenty of ways you make it possible for advertisers to figure that out on their own.

 

“In aggregate, that data can then tell you information about what the average viewer of that billboard looks like,” Andy Stevens, senior vice president for research and insights at Clear Channel Outdoor, told The New York Times. “Obviously that’s very valuable to an advertiser.”

 

Clear Channel is partnering with AT&T Data Patterns, a segment of the company that tracks users, PlaceIQ, an app-based location sensor, and Placed, a program that actually pays users to let it keep tabs on their whereabouts.

 

Radar will have access only to information that has long been accessible to mobile advertisers, according to Clear Channel Outdoor. Tying information like age and gender to a particular location will allow them to sell a more precise profile of the people who see a particular billboard on an average basis.

 

In some cases, Clear Channel will be able to track whether someone who views a billboard ends up accessing the product advertised. If a mobile user has installed the Placed app on their phone, and he or she passes a billboard for a new bar in town, the app will know and be able to report whether the user ever ends up trying the place out.

 

The plan may sound sketchy, but considering the enhanced billboards go on sale Monday in Clear Channel’s 11 major markets, including Los Angeles and New York, it appears to be inevitable. The company plans to open sales to the rest of the country soon as well, meaning the age of billboards that only look one way is effectively over. Now, billboards will always look back at you.

 

Radar also signals the possibility that this strategy may soon be coming to other forms of advertisements including on bus stops, signs and city streets. If the data is easily accessible, it would probably pay for the owner of the advertisement to know it.

 

So it may be an invasion of privacy, but it’s definitely coming to a city near you.

...

Edited by monroe
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This article is from May 2013 and deals with smaller billboards as you walk by them. So three years later ... have these smaller billboards become more "enhanced" ... now also picking up phone data with eyes and face ID ?

 

New Billboard Tracks Your Eye Movements

 

by Fox Van Allen

May 01, 2013

 

http://www.techlicious.com/blog/new-billboard-tracks-your-eye-movements/

 

Welcome to Minority Report: Researchers at Lancaster University in England have created a new type of digital billboard capable of tracking your eye movements.

 

The system, called Sideways, uses a small camera to locate faces, identify eyes, and then track their movement. The content displayed on the screen can change as your eyes move, allowing you to scroll through menus simply by looking at them.

 

Of course, more interesting to retailers is the possibility of using the tracking tech to perfect the art of the advertisement. Say you were in the supermarket checkout aisle, and a candy bar catches your eye. The monitor might display an ad for a different type of candy, or possibly highlight a discount. Shift your gaze to a tabloid, and you might get a few tidbits of hot gossip. And while the advertisement is tracking your eyes, it’s capable of tracking the eyes of 13 other people as well.

 

You can be forgiven for thinking this brings us uncomfortably close to Minority Report, the sci-fi movie where billboards can identify individual passersby using facial recognition. After all, if Facebook can identify you from a picture, so can an advertisement. Technology also exists to track your reaction to ads, so if a pitch isn’t working, the billboard might change its style to better grab your attention. Isn’t technology simultaneously awe-inspiring and terrifying?

...

Edited by monroe
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  • 1 month later...

I guess you could call this an update of sorts ... if it goes anywhere.

'Spying Billboards' Under Fire for Tapping Into People's Cellphones

By michael balsamo, Associated Press

NEW YORK — May 1, 2016

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/schumer-probe-billboards-phone-data-track-shoppers-38794906

A U.S. senator is calling for a federal investigation into an outdoor advertising company's latest effort to target billboard ads to specific consumers.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer has dubbed Clear Channel Outdoor Americas' so-called RADAR program "spying billboards," warning the service may violate privacy rights by tracking people's cell phone data via the ad space.

"A person's cellphone should not become a James Bond-like personal tracking device for a corporation to gather information about consumers without their consent," Schumer, a Democrat, said in a statement ahead of a planned news conference Sunday in Times Square, where the company operates billboards.

But the company, which operates more than 675,000 billboards throughout the world, argues that characterization of its program is inaccurate, insisting it only uses anonymous data collected by other companies.

In a statement, company spokesman Jason King said the RADAR program is based on a years-old advertising technique that "uses only aggregated and anonymized information" from other companies that certify they're following consumer protection standards.

King also provided The Associated Press a copy of a letter it sent earlier this year to another lawmaker who has similarly raised concerns about the ad service and consumer protections.

The company "does not receive or collect personally identifiable information about consumers for use in Radar," CEO Scott Wells wrote in a March letter to Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat. "It's not necessary for the insights we are offering our advertising customers."

The ad program is a partnership between Clear Channel and other companies, including AT&T and technology companies that collects location data from smartphone apps, company officials have said.

In a video on its website, the company says it "measures consumers' real-world travel patterns and behaviors as they move through their day, analyzing data on direction of travel, billboard viewability, and visits to specific destinations." That information, the company says, is then mapped against Clear Channel's displays, which would allow advertisers to buy ads in places that would "reach specific behavioral audience segments."

Clear Channel uses "aggregate and anonymous mobile consumer information," the company said. The program gives marketers a "solution that provides a more accurate way to understand and target specific audience segments," Clear Channel's vice president, Andy Stevens, said in a news release announcing the initiative in February.

But an investigation into the company is necessary because most people don't realize their location data is being mined, even if they agreed to it at some point by accepting the terms of service of an app that later sells their location information, Schumer said.

The Federal Trade Commission did not immediately respond requests for comment.

...

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I still wonder, for example ... if there are four or five people in a vehicle ... carpool or family ... all with personal smart phones set up in a similar way and the vehicle is going at a speed of 35 or 40 mph ... can information be read from all the phones in the vehicle in the one or two seconds passing the billboard?

If a vehicle is going at 65 / 70 mph ... can all that information be collected. There might be something for sale in the future ... a diffuser or product placed in or on the vehicle ... to keep phones from being read but would the phone still work for calls?

...

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