Redfin balances location awareness and privacy with iBeacon deployment<article>
<section class="page">
<p>
A colleague tweeted at me the other day: Why would the Redfin app produce a dialog on his iPhone that read “Location Accuracy: Turning on Bluetooth will improve location accuracy”? Redfin is both an real-estate broker and an enabler of property sales by an owner, but I’d never seen this message before. I was stumped. Colleagues of my friend, however, figured out it was Redfin’s use of iBeacon, Apple’s technology for Bluetooth-based local-information markers.</p><p>
Apple uses Bluetooth as one of several markers to pinpoint location. GPS may be primary, when a clean signal can be acquired, but cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth can provide more granularity. Every cell tower’s location is fixed and typically has a known, highly precise set of coordinates available. Wi-Fi signals get gathered through all of our collective use of iOS devices taking snapshots of Wi-Fi network names and relative signal strength around us. Wi-Fi networks generally remain fixed over periods of time. (Have you ever moved, set up your Apple base station in a different time zone, and seen your iPhone acquire the wrong local time? That’s why.)</p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/3045447/bluetooth/redfin-balances-location-awareness-and-privacy-with-ibeacon-deployment.html#jump">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
Source:
Redfin balances location awareness and privacy with iBeacon deployment
