Beacons Spamming You for the Holidays
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The new beacon technology, popular in iOS, is being rolled out by some stores this holiday season to send spam and advertising directly to your phone when you enter a store.
Anyone seeing this yet?
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It is an interesting technology but even as an iOS user, because I don't leave BlueTooth on so as to improve battery life and because I've not gone out and downloaded a "spam me please" app I have never seen this in action. How many people are really turning on BT and downloading an app so that people can send ads to them when they walk around, I wonder? Some, I am sure, but many?
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I know for a fact a lot of people cause I was asked how to get rid of it by like 10 people in church on Sunday. One of them is an "IT Pro"
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You had people who turned on BT and downloaded a beacon app? And then there were ten of them that didn't know how to remove the app that they installed? Those are very high numbers.
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Yeah I couldn't believe it. This isn't the only app that does this fyi. I can't remember the name of other apps. Drove me nuts Sunday I fixed so many Iphones
but to be fair I think I do this every week. Someone always has IT questions. -
@Reid-Cooper I can see this happening.
Something like this: (store employee) Hey, I can make sure you get great deals if you download this app.
You install the app which turns on BT by default and you agree to it. Tada...you now part of something helpful that can save you money!
Side effects included loss of battery life, annoyances in general.
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Hopefully IT people aren't getting suckered into that line. This is how malware happens.
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I leave bluetooth on for the benefit of handoff in iOS8.
