Post by tangent on Feb 14, 2013 14:12:24 GMT
Your pub landlord enthuses about his free WiFi system and asks you what you think of it. So you try it out. First of all you are presented with a log in screen to Facebook which mentions that it would like to access your basic info, your email address, your profile info, birthday and likes. You don't give it much thought and fire away.
Some time later, a restaurant owner in another town comes up to you and congratulates you on your birthday and winks at you. "Had a good time last Friday," he asks. You look bewildered. You don't know the fellow and you've never visited his restaurant before but you'd rather not talk about last Friday night. But he does, 'I see you visited "Chez Madame" at 11.30pm last Friday," he explains *wink wink*
All this is possible, it would seem, with Purple WiFi, see www.purplewifi.net. As their marketing information explains,
I've discussed this briefly with the regulators of the Data Protection Act and they seem very concerned. I don't want to be alarmist and I haven't tested everything out but from all appearances, it's a real can of worms.
Some time later, a restaurant owner in another town comes up to you and congratulates you on your birthday and winks at you. "Had a good time last Friday," he asks. You look bewildered. You don't know the fellow and you've never visited his restaurant before but you'd rather not talk about last Friday night. But he does, 'I see you visited "Chez Madame" at 11.30pm last Friday," he explains *wink wink*
All this is possible, it would seem, with Purple WiFi, see www.purplewifi.net. As their marketing information explains,
"With our Purple Portal you [the pub landlord] can login realtime and see a variety of reports that are always up to date and at your fingertips. Who comes, how often and how long they stay with views on time of day, week, month or year. You can also see what type of devices they use, what they use the WiFi for and bandwidth patterns.
"When a customer logs onto the ‘So Purple’ WiFi, they will Like or Follow your business in return for access. They only ever do that once and future visits they logon automatically and a post is made to their profile automatically.
"Once somebody has liked your page or followed the venue you can also communicate with them on special offers, general news and other important updates in your world through their social channel. We also capture email addresses, gender age and location so you can create email campaigns to target specific promotions.
"Using the Purple WiFi system you [the pub landlord] will be collecting vast amounts of data about who your customers are and how they interact with you and your venue(s). The reporting module you will have access to is an extremely powerful tool that will help you gain real insights into your customer base.
"Multiple venues... you can install Purple WiFi at as many of your business venues as you like. What’s more, you can view reports and data for your business as a whole, or by specific venues."
I've discussed this briefly with the regulators of the Data Protection Act and they seem very concerned. I don't want to be alarmist and I haven't tested everything out but from all appearances, it's a real can of worms.