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(Continued from page 3) how well they like their recent purchase(s) and then
suggest add-on or accessory items to complement
from cellphones within that area. That captured da- those purchases.
ta can then be aggregated with personal information Although these are the only two examples of this
from other sources to build an amazingly detailed technique that I have run across, it seems clear that
“picture” of an individual. This particular example quite a few businesses, organizations, etc. might
discussed a political rally. By capturing cell phone have an incentive to do this. So far, I’ve not run
info from attendees, the organizer was able to ID across mention of any measures that individuals can
who was in the audience. He then used the names take to protect themselves against this type of priva-
of the attendees to find data from other sources cy intrusion, other than to turn off their cell phones
about their voter registration status, party affiliation, when they are away from home. If anyone knows of
past voting habits and more general personal infor- another form of protection, please share it with us!
mation such as age, gender, religion, occupation
and so on. This aggregated information could then
be used to fine-tune the campaign message(s), ad-
vertising, etc. It could also be used to target the at-
tendees with personalized messages tailored to
their “profile” – much as was done with the help of
Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit and last U.S.
presidential campaigns. (The difference being that
in the latter cases personal information was harvest-
ed from social media accounts; in geofencing per-
sonal information is harvested from cell phone infor-
mation.)
In thinking further about what I had just read, I re-
membered reading some time ago about a similar
initiative involving retailers – although I don’t re-
member the term “geofencing” being used. In that
initiative, a retailer set up a cell phone monitoring
system within the store to alert staff when an estab-
lished customer enters the store. The system then
retrieves name, address, a photo (if available), re-
cent purchases and other related retail information
and displays this info for a staff member, along with
the customer’s physical location within the store.
The staff member is then expected to intercept the
customer, greet him or her by name, inquire about

Michael McEnery USN (Ret)

Finally joining the ranks of us retired seniors.

Retirement is when you stop living
at work and begin working at living

February 2020 4