Big Brother Tesco

hellofreebies

mmm....check out this site and be enlightened...

http://www.boycotttesco.com/index.html

andreboyle

Wow,

People certainly are paranoid. Not wanting to get into a real nasty argument about this but from a shopping point of view RFID will allow you to fill your basket and pass it through a reader. Each and every tag will read and your bil will be calculated, all within a few seconds rather than the standard queue process.

I guess this is the focus of product level TAGing in Tescos. Also, RFID can be disabled remotely usuaully by issues a 'kill' for active devices. This would allow TAGs to become innefective once out of the store.

Also, next generation kitchen systems are already in design to make use of RFID to determine stock levels in your home and to let you know when products go out of date. The equipment for this could be as little as 50 pounds.

On the other hand I do accept the whole civil liberties argument but do feel it's a little paranoid.

Dre

EvilMonkey

Dre, I thought that was the problem with the tags, in that as they're passive devices (and effectivly have to be passed through a reader to be understood) they can't be switched off? (to be honest this was from an article about tesco's on the same subject when they did there trial on gillette blades about a year and a half ago.

I am on the whole "so what" side of things on the civil liberties, who cares if people know I buy things in tescos?

I'm more interested in why they're doing it, extending their ability to record the success at trying to manipulate their customers. (IE they'll be able to track who bought what from which location in a store). Saw a v scary program (I think it was part of a beeb "rip of britain" series) which let you in on some of the tricks they use to sell you just that little bit more....

E.M.

cpjackso

The way the tags work is simple physics... A small charge is passed to the device from a coil a short distance away. This charge is then used to output a radio signal which is received by the till (or whatever) and can then be used to register what the item is. Think of it as similar to a barcode which transmits itself.

All the power levels involved are so low as to not worry about - similar to the square stick-on-security tags used by a lot of stores these days (often with a fake barcode printed on them!).

To make a tag ineffective - you should just be able to put a piece of metal (ie. baking tray??) between your item and the scanner - this will stop any charge being induced - and also stop small radio transmissions. I would have thought the metal trolleys would cause significant problems too! Another way is to induce a charge in the device that burns it's circuitry and stops working - this is how they say they will make the RFID's unreadable when you leave the store (but useful for theives to know too!).

At the end of the day - it should make it far easier for supermarkets to know their stock levels and speed up the check-out process.

I personally don't care about the privacy thing - I always remember when the clubcard/nectar system started when there was a big problem with privacy issues then.... And then sainsburys admitted that they had so much data and they couldn't make head nor tail of it... It was just shopping lists and it didn't really make any sense.

----

On another point - I remember reading a few years ago about tricks certain supermarkets tried where they played the first second or two of (say) the Daz advert jingle - and they watched as their sales on Daz soared! I think this is supposed to be illegal in the UK now.

There's loads of tricks the supermarkets play - to me it seems quite funny that people are oblivious to it.

Another obvious one is putting items on the end-units - these always sell much better than if they were just on their normal section - because people just think they're on offer. Just putting more facings of a product increases it's sales.

IvanOpinion

Another obvious one is putting items on the end-units - these always sell much better than if they were just on their normal section - because people just think they're on offer. Just putting more facings of a product increases it's sales.

Not forgetting that shelves at eye-level are much more sought after than lower or higher shelves ... apparently some manufacturers pay a premium to get their products on these shelves.



If it is a problem for someone then all they have to do is shop elsewhere. Who cares? We have cameras all over the place ... at the checkouts .. on the streets ... who is to say that our credit cards don't contain little electronic tracers ... according to the government we are all soon (2015-ish) going to have electronic tracers in our cars so that they can charge us for our usage and how many miles we do. Nobody complains about Tescos making your online shopping simpler by storing information about what you buy ... horror of horrors, yes they do analyse peoples shopping practices and how best to sell additional items to people ... so does Amazon and many other retailers.

Everybody is going to try to squeeze that extra little pound from your tightly grasped hand.

Ivan

andreboyle

What's funny to me is that a mobile phone provide: -

. A higher degreee of tracking than RFID does on a global perspective

. Personal call log information is stored whether we like it or not

. Radio from mobiles and the system that they use than RFID ever will

. We hold them right next to our brains

. Calls can be intercepted provided a very real privacy issue

Yet oddly enough there are no calls (No pun intended) for mobiles to be banned.

Sometimes the benefits outway the drawbacks.

My personal viewpoint is that if we took everything that has a drawvack and got rid of it, there'd be very little left for us to work with. This isn't a blind pro-progress point of view.... it's just me and my little dollop of common sense deciding that sometimes things that 'can' be bad, are on the whole good and that that is what tips the balance for me.

Other uses of RFID in, for example, theme parks is highly advantageos. They can prvide perimeter marking so that you can be notified if your child goes beyond a boundry. They can also be used to warn if an under-age person is going into an area that they shouldn't be.

From a health and safety point of view they can be used to determine the exact number of people in an area to avoid over-crowding and also to ease in the event of a disaster to evacuate people.

bordercars

ok so they know what we bought and when, but if the checkout process is done remotely no over or under charging, and prices will have to come down because the old excuse of "x" being built into the price because of pilfering will disappear , lets have it on a bit more stuff with an id so when it's lost or stolen it can be returned also on stuff like fridges and tellys , the next time one is dumped at your local beauty spot phone the council they scan it and return it to it's rightful owner with a bill for it's return.
just like id cards, most people will have no cause to worry just the crims and dogooder's

figgy1978

All RFID is there for is to help them track stock and should help get the stock that is needed from the warehouse to the shelves. It isn't there to spy on people.

Tescos can't win can they? They try to do something to improve service and they get people demanding they stop.

peter_the_piper

How long before someone starts to sell pocketable devices which turn off these rfid's? Would this be illegal? Would it be illegal to use this? Imagine the chaos at Tescos when people go up and down the isles and wipe out all the data.
Peter

IvanOpinion

peter_the_piper wrote:

How long before someone starts to sell pocketable devices which turn off these rfid's? Would this be illegal? Would it be illegal to use this? Imagine the chaos at Tescos when people go up and down the isles and wipe out all the data.
Peter

:rotfl: I am still trying to find a mobile phone scrambler that works in the UK ...something just to give me a bit of peace and quiet.

Ivan