Market visitors to be tracked by wi-fi

The Société de développement commercial (SDC) of Jean-Talon market wants to track users by their phones and find things out about them. Article notes that no permission has been asked or given.

This raises a couple of interesting questions, but foremost is: why is the market trying so hard to market itself? Is the SDC really meant to be forcing growth on the market depending whether it finds more of the visitors are local or are tourists? In other words, who is the market for?

Marketing, as a practice, has imperatives that will distort and change anything it touches in the name of the unholy dollar. This is separate from the other issue of privacy, in which this story somewhat resembles the Palais de justice story from earlier this week.

Next time I’m at the market, my wi-fi will be off.

(Thanks to the reader who called my attention to this.)