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Comment by ZeroMinx | Hacker News Reader

Stupid question; can I not opt out of this by turning wifi off while walking around these places?

Yes--if you turn WiFi off, your phone won't broadcast its MAC address, so there's nothing for them to track.

Nordstrom stores in the US were caught tracking shoppers via their phones' MAC addresses earlier this year. All the more reason to turn off WiFi if you're not actively using it.

All the more reason why the US needs a robust data protection act, despite the howls of outrage this will cause in Silicon Valley.

Reading through these comment, I get the feel that many people feel that this kind of observation is wrong in some way. I'm confused about this, since it seems like it's built on the solid social contract that we are free to observe anything that happens I'm a public space. I actually just wrote about this subject this morning.[0] The possibility that I might be observed in public has never bothered me, and I'm curious to hear what other people have to say.

[0] - http://xwl.me/md/erj28mbe62ap193

It's because when we say being observed in public, we assume it to be someone looking at us and then basically forgetting all about us. We don't think about security cameras watching us and having a single party aggregate all of that. And we don't know our cell phones are broadcasting a unique barcode to everything even if we do know the cell towers can triangulate and log our location. (By we I mean our family members, not us on HN.)

Adding technology to the observation makes it so much stronger that I think there should be a new discussion about it by our various governments.

How is passing legislation going to stop people from doing things like this?

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