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Comment by rtutz | Hacker News Reader

Think about how this information could be used. As a store owner you can precisely track movement of customers and optimize the shop layout.

BT hardware is also rather affordable.

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You're already tracked like that. I was building solutions to do it well over a decade ago. One customer was well known for their mouse themed hats. A famous hotel brand in a well known casino city used it to track employees instead. I no longer do that for obvious ethical reasons.

There may be a rare few legitimate uses for improving the accuracy, but it also makes those privacy nightmares worse.

My previous employer already had a product offering that could do this for a better part of a decade by triangulating with WiFi/BLE and cross referencing with surveillance footage. It was deployed in malls and retail chains.

It generated interesting information, but not interesting enough to be profitable.

We weren't the only ones with this capability either, most major retailers had this level of analytics through surveillance footage that previously existed for loss prevention purposes. Then simply link the data to a rewards number or credit card and you got a stable tracking identity.

> loss prevention

So preventing theft?

No, loss prevention. :)

"Theft" is such a value-loaded, moralizing term. It collapses a wide spectrum of socioeconomic realities into a single criminalized label, ignoring the structural inequities that often shape people's choices. When we say "loss prevention", we're deliberately reframing the conversation away from individual blame and toward systems, environments, and institutional responsibility. Loss prevention isn't about vilifying people - it's about acknowledging that harm occurs within a broader context. It centers the idea that organizations can design safer, more equitable spaces that minimize material loss without resorting to punitive narratives rooted in classism, racism, and centuries-old assumptions about who is "dangerous". Calling something "theft" externalizes accountability onto the most vulnerable actors; calling it "loss" recognizes that institutions have agency, too. And preventing that loss focuses on proactive, compassionate strategies rather than reactive punishment.

This message is approved by the Ministry of Peace.

I'm dumber for having read that.

Poe's Law is strong in this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

La propriété, c'est le vol !

-- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The industry tends to use the even harder-to-understand term "shrink". Not always theft, just any loss of product versus what the books say they should have.

Theft is only one cause of loss. Stocking/admin/counting mistakes, accidental damage, spoilage, or simply people moving stuff around or misplacing items so they're not where it's expected all fall under loss.

I've worked with a major retailer on similar backend systems and can echo the post above - all of them are running these systems and they almost never discuss the specifics (until someone like Walmart sues Everseen and we get a glimpse behind the curtain from the court documents).

If you go to an org's website offering these tools (eg, Everseen mentioned above, RetailNext, etc), they don't directly advertise the full breadth of their capabilities until you have them in a room for a sales pitch. They can combine multiple data streams such that an individual can be traced throughout the store via cameras, wifi, and bluetooth, which gives the retailer an opportunity to sell that information. Did a customer pause in front of the corn chips but then decide not to buy? Print them out a Frito-Lay coupon at checkout and see if you can't get them next time, and Frito-Lay will pay you to do that.

That's so cursed. I suppose since the source of the money here is the manufacturer, this only happens in major retailers with large shops?

Do you know if smaller shops in india/asia also make use of this?

I have no first hand experience outside of North America so I won’t speculate. There is a cost of entry so you need to be moving enough volume in a market already working on razor thin margins. I’d expect that this means it’s only for the regional/national players here.

Ah ok so just to confirm the providers charge the store per user entry? That gives me a good idea of who would go for it. Thanks

Sorry, "cost of entry" meaning that the software and the supporting hardware platforms makes it cost prohibitive for a small org that isn't moving a lot of volume from their shelves. Grocer margins are razor thin already.

I work with retail stores who do exactly this in a number of different ways! Many chains are already populated with all kinds of BT sniffing(?) equipment. At least one pings RFID tags in everything every 5 seconds. It’s wild.

And guess what, that shop layout is not going to be optimized for the customer's convenience, but for the shop's profits. These kind of solutions tend to converge on the 'Hotel California' model: you can enter, but you can no longer leave.

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