The other day I posted about bluetooth advertising and how if you are shopping in Sultan Center you can now receive ads on your phone. I like many of you had some concerns regarding this service and how easily it can turn into spam. Well someone from the company responsible for this bluetooth advertising commented the following:
Hi, I’ve been following your conversations regarding bluetooth. My company is actually implementing these bluetooth services in Kuwait and I’m always interested to hear what people have to say about it. I agree with everyone that spam is a major problem which is why when we put our network together we were sure to set non-spam parameters. If you reject the message once, you shouldn’t receive another request for at least a week. Also, no matter which location you go into, you shouldn’t receive more than 3 messages in a week. If this is not the case in any particular location it’s probably because we are doing testing and optimization. Within the next few months we hope to bring a number of services that you would actually find useful, so bear with us. I think you’ll be impressed.
I think the fact that its limited to 3 messages a week per person is a good thing. But the big problem is that I don’t think its possible for us to opt out of this service. This means anyone with a bluetooth phone is forced to receive 3 adverts a week. Sucks.
Update: Nibaq pointed out something very important regarding this bluetooth service. Read below:
Very interesting. So it registers your MAC address of your phone. Even though you aren’t accepting messages when the machine does a search it will regonize your phone and store it.
Spread these machines around town not sending anything but just registering phones and what do you have? A wonder tracking device.
Sultan can see how many times you visit the store in a month, and which stores. You can even track how long a customer is at the store.
Just another reason to have my bluetooh on Non Discoverable mode or simply off.
33 replies on “About Bluetooth Advertising in Kuwait”
lol Mark are you EVER satisfied? rofl
Would you want to receive advertising in your email and not be given a chance to opt out? Thats what spam is.
he said 3 mesgs a week…how do they track that? I mean how do they identify your phone?
I believe every bluetooth device has a MAC Address like network cards..
What if people just turn off their Blue Tooth while in public areas such as these?
then u wont receive the adverts
this is like the cellphone advertising thing they had a while back .. it was called flash or something. I give it a couple months before it dies down, nobody wants to recieve crap on their cell phone.
We actually keep track of how many messages you receive because each phone has a unique bluetooth ID. Also, you don’t have to receive those 3 messages every week. If you reject the 1st message, you won’t receive another one for a week. By the time our system is fully implemented this summer, if you reject our message a 2nd time, you won’t receive another request for a month. The 3rd time, our system flags you and you never receive another message again. Since a lot of these messages will be vouchers, though, you will be able to log in and download them if you’d like. If we find that users think these parameters are too intrusive or too conservative, we’ll change them. But it will take time to see how people react. Also, someone had mentioned 3g services in your last post. 3G is great, but you have to pay heavily for its usage. By the end of this year, we’ll be able to provide you with a similar range of services via Bluetooth, except most of them will be free.
Very interesting. So it registers your MAC address of your phone. Even though you aren’t accepting messages when the machine does a search it will regonize your phone and store it.
Spread these machines around town not sending anything but just registering phones and what do you have? A wonder tracking device.
Sultan can see how many times you visit the store in a month, and which stores. You can even track how long a customer is at the store.
Just another reason to have my bluetooh on Non Discoverable mode or simply off.
This is insane! Its as if they are going to track you without your knowledge..
They are going to use the MAC address’s of the bluetooth in the same way amazon uses cookies.. but Sultan could get more information when it comes to tracking the customer, and who walks in.
I feel an infringment on my civil rights!
I don’t see why someone would keep his bluetooth on in the first place, unless he’s using it to pair with a head set. Even in that case, I don’t see any significant convenience in walking around with a bluetooth headset, so in my opinion there is no reason to complain.
Also the three time rejection constraints raj noted gives an option to reject any further ads and instead gives you(BT always on ppl) a chancefor somebody to notice your so cool nick/number and receive that contact/message/call you are hoping for.
people should be complaining about the crap wataniya/mtc sends.
Carl you dont seem to know how bluetooth and bluetooth headsets work.
If you use a bluetooth headset you need to have bluetooth turned on on your phone, even when not using the headset. Once you get back in the car all u need to do is press a button on the headset while putting it on and it pairs with your phone.
also many people who have bluetooth connection in their cars like Lexus need to have bluetooth on their phones on so once they get into the car the phone connects to the cars speaker system automatically.
for people like me who regulary sync their phones or pdas to their computers we also keep bluetooth on. this way once i get to my computer i just click on the sync button and my phone gets updated. If I have to keep my bluetooth off that means I need to turn it on everytime I need to sync. It becomes a hassel because it would mean the phone should be near me to sync because i need to turn it on and off.
So whats happening is this forced bluetooth advertising and tracking is forcing me to change my habbits.
interesting
i do not believe that Kuwait has an data protection laws of any level significance. What’s more, if there is anything of the sort, then enforcing them is second to teaching people how to drive on their priority list.
🙂
Around $120 million dollars per day in oil revenues and we still can’t get it right.
Great
even marina mall use bluetooth ad
Mark, I never used headsets, so I stand corrected. but, if you’re gonna walk away from your car , you’re gonna be out of range, meaning your mobile’s bt will be considered off for the headset, and when you walk back in range the headset will detect it, isnt’ that right? so wouldn’t turn it back on when you’re in your car and the pressing the headset button would be the same?
Besides, turning bt is just a few button presses. and ome mobiles can be customized like for instance my phone, I just press up and bt is on/off.
Carl, bluetooth is always on, once you get close to the car or headset it pairs, when you leave their range they unpair but bluetooth remains on so that next time u r in range it activates.
now youre saying turning off and on bluetooth is a few button presses.. well deleting spam email takes a click of a button also does that make it ok?
hmmm what happenned to green tooth?
Mark, which is my point. When you get out of/in range it’s like turning bluetooth off/on.
Email spam is no way compared to bluetooth ads. The main reason is that you are getting local ads, which might be useful products or offers you didn’t know about, but in emails it’s just useless crap about penis enlargements and such, and half of it might be scams.
I don’t know about you guys, but I think SMS spam is worse as I mentioned. I dunno if it’s just Wataniya like that or is it just xpress accounts, but I get SMS’s about daily for crap like ringtones and wallpapers, and those are unavoidable.
carl when u go out of range u dont turn bluetooth off… it stays on.
Email SPAM and bluetooth ads are the exact same thing. As long as you are getting the ads without your permission thats SPAM.
SMS Spam is as bad as bluetooth ads can be and as bad as email spam is.
Dude, I’m saying that if you go out of range it’s the same as turning it OFF, so by really turning it OFF, you also avoid ads.. you getting what i’m saying?
Well okay maybe technically it’s spam, but it’s not as bad as email spam, at least the way raj described it. Of course it could be worse later.
You are not making sense. Turning bluetooth off means turning bluetooth off. To do that you have to go into the menu and manually turn it off.
When you go out of range bluetooth is still ON, it doesnt get turned off so going out of range is not the same as turning it off because bluetooth is still on.
when you go out of range you are considered OFF for the headset
yes but your phones bluetooth is still on. so when u come back u click the headset button and its paired. some models they get paired while in range.
but if your phones bluetooth is off then you have to turn it back on which with my phone is a 3 button process and i know with some nokias a longer process and then also click the headset button… too complicated and a big hassel just to avoid ads on my phone which i never approved to receive.
call 777 …lol
Kids,
Stick your phone in non-discovery mode .. it doesnt show up when you search publically and pre-authorized blutooth devices can still pair (Car/headset/laptop).
or even better
use carrier pigeons, technology is overrated
Now that’s spam but in a way it could become a data bank for storing real consumer behavior at shopping malls and loging accordingly; leading to User Behavior Marketing later in the mall. So it becomes an information black market later instead of an ad revenue stream/source.
Remember annonymous browsing and IP masking on ur PCs? get ur gear on for ur mobile experience now! Snoop up!
Okay fine, these dudes might have some self respect and not dump more than 3 bluetooth ads a week, but what if another company decides to jump the wagon?
government legislation required….
bah, dream on
The concerns that people have regarding privacy are quite valid, but it’s worth noting that we can track bluetooth ID’s, but not phone numbers. Also, the fact that we can track it and see that you don’t want to accept messages over a period of time will help us control spam. The mobile operators on the other hand can track your mobile phone number to within a few meters, across the entire country. At least you can opt-out of our medium without having to call a number. With SMS you cannot. Plus, this tool is very important for advertisers because for the first time it let’s them see who accepted their message and who rejected. With this information we hope that companies will seek to actually improve the quality of advertising. Also, Moodi’s comment that other companies may decide to spam users’ is very possible, which is why my company is in the process of signing up all the major locations so that we can standardize this medium as much as possible. Can people on this forum give me an idea as to what they would like to receive via Bluetooth (i.e. vouchers, discounts, funny films, movie trailers, etc.) If we were to offer you MSN chat via bluetooth in our locations, would you use it?
Porn would be a start..
No seriously, could start off with vouchers, which is a sure way to see if customers take the ads seriously. I’d use MSN Messenger if you had a strict/clear data collection policy.
Decent movie trailers would be okay, but funny clips, ringtones, games and all that rubbish would make you seem unproffesstional.
As a sidenote, maintain strict regulations and it might be accepted well.
Discounts would be cool. How about a random draw for a prize? Randomly pick a device and send them a message for winning a prize(movie tickets/discounts/etc). This would be an incentive to make people keep their bluetooths on and make them accept messages.
Hey,
about this bluetooth advertising…anyone considered whether its a secure medium or not? for instance in my phone to accept a bluetooth message from someone all i see is the guy’s bluetooth name! is there anyway to know that the bluetooth message that one would get is not a virus? whats a MAC address?