Problems and misconceptions on reusing Wi-Fi infrastructure

Dubai - Big issue today is people giving up substantial amount of privacy and data

Smartphones are to be known as one of the most impactful technologies of this century. But recently, the issue which has been making headlines is that in exchange for this level of access to the Internet, people are giving up substantial amount of privacy and data. This has even led to the fact that organisations are using the channel of obtaining the MAC address to track people through their mobile phones.
A MAC address, or a media access control address, is a unique identifier for a network interface which in turn provides data such as where you have been, are going, how much time you have spent in that particular location and to an extent how many times you have been to a particular location.
Until now, this unique, static MAC address of each Wi-Fi device has been used to uniquely identify a device; however, since Apple's introduction of iOS 8, the new feature uses a random MAC address for Wi-Fi connections. Apple's main focus behind introducing this feature is to enable additional safeguard measures for consumer privacy, while increasing barriers for vendors who track and gather analytics. In previous versions of iOS, apps had access to MAC addresses by way of the address resolution protocol (ARP) tables stored within the device. Now moving forward, thanks to the many misuses of the data which is collected, the latest release of the iOS 11, apps can no longer use the ARP table to view the MAC addresses.
Now moving forward, the retail landscape Bluetooth Beacon technology was a goldmine before the crash. Today we are witnessing another crash in the making - behaviour analysis systems which are based on Wi-Fi access points and Wi-Fi router technology which are used to track devices within a retail business and public common areas. This sophisticated level of tracking has been possible because Wi-Fi-enabled devices routinely probe request to search for nearby networks, and these requests contain the unique MAC address of the device. This replaces the number that uniquely identifies a device's wireless hardware with randomly generated values.
So this brings me to beg the question - does Wi-Fi tracking really work? Let's go over some of the problems of reusing Wi-Fi infrastructure and the misconceptions of Wi-Fi tracking systems.
 
Limitations
Existing Wi-Fi access points and/or Wi-Fi routers heed to the MAC Address of the signals which are sent by the smart devices. As the signals are in communication from multiple location within the business, the Wi-Fi access points can determine where the device emitting the signal is located. But keep in mind, any existing Wi-Fi access point at any retailer are in a position for a certain optimised coverage, not in analytics usage. So, it is impossible to obtain accurate and useful location insights for the business layout. The viable option would be to increase the number of Wi-Fi access points to increase the accuracy, but in turn becomes very expensive solution.
 
Big errors in detection
All vendors for Wi-Fi routers or access points provide an API which communicates to the MAC addresses from the signals to identify the smart device. This is the core functionality for solution vendors of Wi-Fi tracking and Analytics systems. But today, majority of new smart devices in the market are emitting multiple MAC addresses when they are not even connected to the Wi-Fi access points.
For example, one iPhone is able to produce 20 or more different and/or false MAC addresses when visiting a store for 30-40 minutes. So, imagine a customer comes into the store at which the smart device is in use - the MAC address is captured. Then the customer begins his/her journey through the store but puts the smart device on sleep mode, once the device is turned on - a second MAC address is generated for capture. Herein lies the dilemma where Wi-Fi tracking solution vendors are offering statistical data to the retail sector, which in turn is false information and misleading. At the current state, there is no viable solution to this particular dilemma.
Only if the smart device is connected to the Wi-Fi to access free Internet, then alone can you be able to detect the unique MAC address of the device.
 
Non-actionable data
Many of the solutions which we are witnessing in the market have been developed by engineers without any real experience and without feedback from the retailers.
Followed by visitor counts is the heatmap solution, which is used to detect highly-populated shadow zones. Heatmap data is based on triangulation of signal strength by using several access points, but primarily depends on the position of the smart device. As it is in constant motion, the signals would not be received by all Wi-Fi access points, and depending on the obstacles in the path to each access point the signal strength varies. So, in a real setting, the location data which is obtained is poor and/or misleading as the location accuracy cannot exceed more than 20-25 sqm. In short, the Wi-Fi heatmap analytics data provided would not have actionable information for a retailer, as their main focus is to understand the traffic by each aisle/zone with each product.
 
Alternate solution
Retailers are now sourcing out omnichannel solutions, which is becoming a modern approach to commerce that focuses on designing a cohesive user experience at every touchpoint, mixing online and offline or in-store concepts. Thus, leading to a solution-based in specific radio sensors and SDKs is required to be designed in order to solve the gap to connect both worlds. This would allow connection to even standard IT infrastructure.
There are few solutions out in the market today which are trying to bridge the gap, or claiming to do so, however the fact of the matter is that there still not a viable one-stop solution.
The writer is chief innovation catalyst at Xpandretail. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.