From the NY Times article:
"In order for any beacon-led action to happen on a phone, you must install an app that communicates with beacons. And installing one kind of app doesn't mean you are authorizing all beacons to talk to your phone. An N.F.L. app, for example, can communicate only with the beacons the N.F.L. has installed. However, some apps might have broader reach, so be careful."
Ah, there it is, the requisite "be careful" proviso. The only real dark cloud in a piece that otherwise sticks to the general tone of most "tech" reporting: Life will be great when your toaster is connected to the internet, so let's get on board!
Never mind that most of the apps you install probably enable intrusive mechanisms of one kind or another. Never mind that the TOS and EULAs [that most users accept blindly] grant the purveyors of said apps the right to do all this and more at any time, the clause being buried somewhere in the 30,000 or more words of the agreement, or in one of several equally long and onerous agreements referenced and linked within.
Oh, and never mind that turning an app's tracking/snooping "off" sometimes does nothing. The Foxit PDF reader app is a perfect example, and there are doubtless many more.
And now, a rebuttal of sorts to this very post, built right in:
This entire rant is nothing new. Privacy advocates, bunker-dwellers, hacktivists and all manner of digital misanthropes have been beating this drum for years. The drumbeat is only audible to for those who are already tuned to the correct wavelength, so the result is just more preaching to the converted. The rest of us [read: the majority] believe that things are fine just the way they are, which is exactly how we got to now.
It took many decades on this earth, but the one thing I finally "got" about America is this: Most [99 percent] of the time, governments and corporations give the people exactly what the people want.
Jim ==================================== The future? Yeah, I've heard of it.