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Less rant, more story.

Tl;Dr: Disney uses "Magic Bands" to track every action of every person within their parks.

So I took my family to Disney World this past summer and we got these "nifty" little things called Magic Bands. These things are little wrist devices that basically handle everything for you in the parks. It unlocks your resort room, it gets you into the parks, you pay for meals and souvenirs with it by connecting a credit card and/or your meal plan. It makes things real simple as it's like putting on your watch each day.

At first I kinda enjoyed how easy it made everything on the trip, but then as we were exiting a ride the couple in front of us noticed the digital signs had their names on them, I looked around and noticed mine too, a sign that said "have a good day $myName." It suddenly clicked. These "Magic Bands" are people trackers. Suddenly everything about the park that I had been enjoying, was part of the system they had in place using these bands as human cattle tags. The ride wait time estimations were perfect, not because of a good algorithm and estimations, but because they had actual real data telling them when a person entered the line and got off the ride.

Using a BLE scanner app I was able to see that they have hundreds of APs throughout the parks tracking every single band on every single person withing their compound. I started to think about all of the data they're collecting and the thought of it was overwhelming. The amount of assumptions they can make about people based on their actions within their parks and what that data would be worth to additional advertisers. By the end of the trip I was cynically pointing out everything to my family about the cattle tags and how much I hated wearing it and yet it was required in order to do anything.

Comments
  • 36
    Damn imagine that.

    The world's most popular theme park wants to know what ppl do inside of it.
  • 14
    Nice story, but this what IOT is about right ?
    This is how the future will look like with all those beacons, 5g around in every building.
    Robots serving humans before they raise and produce terminators.
  • 3
    @Stuxnet wanting to know what people do and having access to the exact location and movement patterns of people are two different things. They could theoretically locate any single person within their park within a few meters if they wanted.

    How would you like to start getting ads about prostate exams because Disney tracked that you visited the bathroom twice an hour while you were there? And that's just a minor taste of what they could do.
  • 3
    @sylar182
    Meh. Spam thier network with false beacons, and check if you can duplicate them. Security on those is probably total shit.
  • 5
    I wonder if this is how people in China feel about the social credit system they have now.
  • 4
    @sylar182 I know Disney is a piece of shit company, but come on dude. Your example is pretty fuckin stupid.
  • 4
    Wondering if this is in the EU because if it is, it would be illegal without explicit consent.
  • 1
    @linuxxx It's in Florida.
  • 4
    @Stuxnet I didn't understand why the tinfoil hat bothered me until now.

    I would rather people question the motives of those with power over them. The antithesis to this is blindly agreeing with and accepting every whim of those in power.

    The first is often mocked, but they serve a purpose of being an early warning system for the masses. Sometimes the most ridiculous notions turn out to in fact be fact and dangerous to liberty.
  • 0
    @Demolishun Or it's more likely they're just overly paranoid.
  • 1
    If disney figured out I needed a prostate exam based on my bathroom patterns, well I guess I'd go get a prostate exam and be thankful they were looking out for my best interests.
  • 1
    Yeah, and what's the problem exactly?
    If anything, Disney wants to know these things in order to improve the parks themselves. As you said, the wait time was perfect, because they know exactly who is in that ride, and you can pay with the band without worrying about your credit card. The information is not relevant to anyone except Disney, so it's used for your convenience
  • 1
    @EzeKoren but but but muh data!!!!

    Some people want to forgo anything convenient if it means they can protect "muh data."
  • 1
    Dude they don't give a fuck about you personally. It's not spying and they just want statistics, what works and what doesn't. Think about it.

    Let's say you open a shop and after a month you can see that your customers bought more of product A than product B then obviously you'll learn from that and your next product C will be more similar to popular product A.

    It's the exact same thing happening here on a larger scale of course but I don't really see anything sinister about it.
  • 1
    Ever heard of westworld?
  • 3
    wait until you realize that the supermarket membership/discount cards also exist primarily to track individuals' purchasing habits for the stores to get data, and the silly discounts/customer points those cards give you are just a way to make you use them and give stores all your datas.

    ... how weird, that in an age when collecting data about your customers has become viable, and turned out to be effective in tuning the services/products to maximize profits, companies had started doing it en masse! ;-D
  • 4
    It's so weird seeing so many people on the thread with apparent tech backgrounds not seeing the problem with such a massive data mining operation.
    Folks, you are nothing but your data. Your 'useless shit' you do in the park, given enough time, can build a pretty picture of exactly what you will do outside the park.
    What you're missing out on is the fact that this is personally identifiable data. If they were using it to 'improve your experience' only, then there would be no name to tag to your band.
    What's more worrying is the dismal response here. No one suggested having a handover mechanism for the tag which can wipe your data in front of your eyes when you hand the band back while leaving the theme park.
    Saying shit like this is a 'tinfoil hat' scenario shows a gross misunderstanding of how valuable your data is. You're paying them not only for the rides (which makes sense), but also to make 10x that amount by selling your apparently useless life to Cambridge Analytics type shits.
  • 2
    If what you mean by "convenience" is to not give a shit about your own health, and to not pay attention to your own kid in a crowded spot, then you're using technology as an excuse to be lazy. It's that behaviour that makes manipulating your lazy ass so easy for the miners.
    Have fun enjoying the life an out of control capitalist economy dictates you should live, but don't parade your ignorance with such flimsy ass excuses for technology being applied very very poorly.
  • 0
    @confusionsays the word "problem" is subjective.

    Your problems != my problems
  • 3
    @Stuxnet data usage, and protection is equally subjective.

    Data mined by hobby app != Data mined by ad networks.

    Yet both are governed by the same laws.
    Uber's Travis attempted to use customers' location data to blackmail rivals.
    A big blue company I worked at previously, lost an employee in a war torn region, and used server logs based IP triangulation to narrow down his location for contact, and evacuation.

    Two distinct scenarios, similar data requirements, and very different approaches.
    A callous approach to how *you* as a developer approach data will percolate down to your users.

    Of course, you could choose to say 'fuck everyone for not being responsible for their own shit' and live life. No problem, personal choice.
  • 1
    @confusionsays "mechanism that wipes your data in front of your eyes"

    sure, because something like that is possible, because when a system i have no control over and i see it for the first time in my life says "data deleted", i can totally trust that it wasn't just an animation to make me feel good.
  • 1
    @Midnigh-shcode if laws, monitoring agencies, and companies were even half serious about data privacy, and protection, at least this sort of a procedure would be commonplace. In this hypothetical ideal world, companies secretly not clearing the data would be ostensibly breaking the law in a way that many major players would not be comfortable with.
    As compared to reality today where, as this thread has witnessed, people just don't know, or choose not to give a shit enough in the name of "convenience".
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