Viewsy: Tracking Movement Of Customers Without Threatening Their Privacy

This year, 50 Big Data start-ups from 17 countries were showcasing their products in a specially designed pavilion at CeBIT exhibition in Hanover, as part of the Code_n competition. Viewsy – a retail analytics platform made by a team based in London – managed to win the main award, and bank the €30,000 prize.

The start-up has created a Google Analytics-like tool for brick-and-mortar retail stores that anonymously tracks customer movement using white-label routers and smartphone Wi-Fi MAC addresses.

After the finals, our colleagues from ITespresso Germany tracked down Carl Pratt, director of partnerships at Viewsy, to find out more about the technology behind the winning product, and the company’s plans for the future.

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Max Smolaks

Max 'Beast from the East' Smolaks covers open source, public sector, startups and technology of the future at TechWeekEurope. If you find him looking lost on the streets of London, feed him coffee and sugar.

View Comments

  • The guy is either naïve or simply lying, if you track someone using a MAC address of their personal phone you are effectively tracking them. The information can be hooked up to any credit card purchase in the store (till location/time stamp) - so the big data becomes very personal data - and don't say it won't be eventually!

    Of course it will fail if people have the sense to switch off the phone's WIFI - which you should do anyway as its one sure fire way to drain your batteries.

    Companies engaging in this type of tracking hopefully will be boycotted by shoppers or at least this one!

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