Angela Martin of CBS-DFW follows up on a story mentioned previously on this blog:
Nordstrom is no longer collecting information from the smart phones of its customers.
Since September, sensors staged throughout the stores were able to track signals from smart phones as they attempted to connect to Wi-Fi service. The company said it was using the data to measure foot traffic within different departments of its stores at different times of the day.
Nordstrom spokesperson Tara Darrow confirmed the company stopped using sensors the day after CBS 11 aired a story about the practice. After the story, customers contacted the company to ask questions and share feedback, according to Darrow.
Read more on CBSDFW.
Shining the light on surveillance practices – by government or businesses – sometimes help. In this case, it seems to have brought the “experiment” to a quicker halt and gave the business some feedback from customers who were unhappy with what the store was doing.