POPPING into the supermarket to pick up a few bits of shopping doesn't take long - but is enough time for retailers to use clever technology to track your movements and spy on you without you even knowing.
Last week, it emerged supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury's are using the contents of shoppers baskets to decide what to charge for their insurance premiums.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg as brands deploy increasingly hi-tech equipment to monitor customers' shopping habits, movements and even their hobbies and personal lives.
For years, it's been known loyalty programmes such as the Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury's Nectar scheme have been used to analyse customers' baskets.
The information has been used to tailor offers towards customers and decide which products go in which stores.
However new technologies such as facial recognition, Wi-Fi tracking and even scanning customers' personal pictures are giving stores even greater powers to snoop on their shoppers.
Keeping your Wi-Fi on could help supermarkets track you through store
Andrew Fowkes, head of retail centre of excellence for retail analytics firm SAS, told Sun Online supermarkets and high street stores are having to respond to competition from online rivals with far more access to information on their customers.
He said: "The key for us at the moment and where we feel the data is most useful is live information at the point of sale or available to staff on the shop floor.
"This is where staff have devices - watches in some cases - which can feed them information on previous purchases, for example, which can be used to up-sell or provide style advice and a highly personalised service.
"We feel this is mutually beneficial and provides a better service to customers and is better for both sides than customers being spammed with blanket information."
Facial recognition technology can be used to tailor adverts
But privacy campaigners warn the technology also brings more sinister results.
Big Brother Watch researcher Jennifer Krueckeberg told Sun Online: "The methods that retailers are using to get to our personal data are becoming increasingly intrusive.
"Whether we give out our email address at the till to get a receipt or connect to ‘free’ Wi-Fi - most of the time we are not even aware what we are signing up for.
"We all need to get more data-savvy and think twice before we give out any personal information, if we don’t want to be bombarded with marketing emails and ads."
Here are just some of the ways your favourite stores are keeping tabs on you:
Wi-Fi tracking
- Where: From store entrance to exit
- Technology: Real-time location systems (RTLS) which locate and monitor active devices
- Who uses it: Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Topshop and many more
How it works: As soon as you enter many supermarkets or high street stores, if you have your Wi-Fi switched on - and that means just not actively switching it off - you can be followed around the aisles without even knowing it.
Retailers use systems tracking pings emitted by mobile phones to see how and where shoppers move in their shops.
Keeping your Wi-Fi on could help supermarkets track you through store
The pings are given out if the phone's Wi-Fi is searching for networks to connect to and allows stores to measure the routes customers take through the aisles and how long they browse in certain sections.
Finnish marketing and analytics firm company Walkbase recently used the technology in Morrisons stores to find out why people were ditching their shopping baskets before reaching the checkout.
They discovered too few staff were serving during busy times, leading to customers giving up on smaller shops in order to get home.
A Walkbase spokesman previously told Sun Online: "We’re not tracking individuals, we can’t see their search history or browsing information.
“We use the information to provide analytics to the store to help them run their stores more efficiently.
“If someone doesn’t want to be picked up by the system they can remove themselves via Walkbase.com/privacy or they can turn Wi-Fi off on their mobile phone."
Facial recognition technology
- Where: On in-store CCTV and till screens
- Technology: Identifies features to distinguish age, gender, mood and even individual identities
- Who uses it: Tesco, Asda, B&Q and many more
How it works: Tracking shoppers' movements is becoming big business and new innovations such as facial recognition systems are now being snapped up by major firms.
Using CCTV cameras positioned throughout the store, the technology is capable of profiling shoppers' age, gender and even whether or not you're smiling.
A customer experiences a facial recognition payment system, also known as the "Smile to Pay" system, at a KFC fast restaurant in China
In a branch of KFC in Beijing, a facial recognition computer decides what people might order by scanning their faces and judging age, gender and mood.
The tech company behind it, Baidu, boasted in a press release: "A male customer in his early 20s” would be offered “a set meal of crispy chicken hamburger, roasted chicken wings and coke”.
Meanwhile “a female customer in her 50s” would get a recommendation of “porridge and soybean milk for breakfast”.
British shops are yet to go that far but a survey by Computer Services Corporation in 2015 found more than a quarter of stores are using facial recognition systems.
Tesco was an early adopter of OptimEyes screens which run tailored adverts based on the age and gender of customers looking at them at the till.
The systems are marketed to allow retailers to make more targeted advertising campaigns for its customers.
Earlier, this month Facebook revealed it is developing a camera which will be able to alert shop assistants if a customer unhappy or needs assistance as well as target shoppers with specific products based on their Facebook profiles.
Photo scanning
- Where: On your mobile phone or electronic devices
- Technology: In-app software that scans users' photo galleries
- Who uses it: Trials conducted with Tesco and Camelot
How it works: In a new development trialled by Tesco and which may be about to hit British stores soon, businesses can scan your personal photos on mobile devices to predict your shopping habits.
Pixoneye works in the background of a store's own app when you download it and give it permission to access your photos.
The tool can scan pictures without uploading or storing them - and avoid falling foul of data protection laws.
Its creators say Pixoneye can produce profiles of users age, gender, hobbies and lifestyles.
For example, jet-setters posting regular holiday snaps, football supporters taking pictures at the game or Taylor Swift fans posing in front of one of the star's posters could all be profiled so stores know more about their customers.
Life changes such as pregnancy or a house move could also be detected and influence targeted adverts, as well as allowing companies to build up a fuller picture of their customers.
Chief executive Ofri Ben-Pora told City AM: "Our big thing is not taking photos and tagging them for what’s in the photo, but taking them and trying to tell a story about a person.
"The data belongs solely to the app that has installed the SDK – we don’t own the data."
Experts have predicted the Wi-Fi analytics industry will be worth around £20bn by the end of the decade.
Loyalty cards
- Where: Used at tills after customers have signed up
- Technology: Provides shops and supermarkets with huge database of customers and allows retailers to tailor offers to them.
- Who uses it: The majority of major retailers have some form of loyalty scheme
How it works: The original customer analysis tool, more than 25 million people are estimated to have at least one loyalty card.
Tesco was the first to launch such as scheme in 1995 and today has around 15 million Clubcard members.
It means stores have a wealth of information over what you have purchased and your personal profile.
It also adapts what it stocks in stores based on who is buying the products, for example, by working out that a low-selling product is commonly bought by loyal customers so keeping it on the shelves.
However, with increased informational available to online competitors such as online browsing habits and social networks, the schemes' importance to retailers are fading fast.
Till receipts
- Where: At the till at point of purchase
- Technology: Shop assistants ask customers if they want a so-called "e-receipt" rather than printing one at the till.
- Who uses it: A number of high street retailers including Topshop, Argos and Debenhams
How it works: Retailers say the practice is for the convenience of customers, as having a digital copy of a receipt is easier than having a scrap of paper.
But it also allows the name and e-mail address to be used for marketing purposes and there are reported cases of staff being offered bonuses to collect the data.
TheSun
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