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Apple Patent Application Shows How to Use Beacons to Track iPhones for Advertisers

Apple has applied for a patent covering its iBeacon system, the poorly understood network it wants to build that might help it create maps of the inside of buildings or send ads to your iPhone as you walk past store shelves. While the existence of iBeacon itself is not news, the new application is interesting because it gives us more detail — and a lot of diagrams — on how Apple believes marketers ought to use the iBeacon network, how it can track iPhone users with a "Universally Unique Identifier," and the information it collects about you that can be used for targeting ads at you. 

Read the whole story at Business Insider »

1 comment about "Apple Patent Application Shows How to Use Beacons to Track iPhones for Advertisers".
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  1. Doc Searls from Customer Commons, December 3, 2015 at 4:52 p.m.

    How does this square with Apple's privacy policy: http://www.apple.com/privacy/ ? There it says, "at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy." Being tracked without one's conscious and explicit permission or knowledge is a compromise of personal privacy. (Yes, I know it's standard operating procedure with adtech, but that doesn't make it right. It just makes it common.) I assume Apple will want, if it pursues this path, to get clear and conscious opt-in from iPhone customers. Given the rapid rise of ad blocking, earned by adtech — of which this new Apple thing will be an example — I'd say that's a long shot.

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