How I Let Disney Track My Every Move | Hacker News Reader

How I Let Disney Track My Every Move

gizmodo.com

60 pointsjgrahamc40 comments

If you're in Disney World, it's safe to assume Disney is tracking you to some degree, Magic Band or no. They have staff. They have cameras everywhere. You sign up for Fast Pass and you buy their food. This isn't some government agency tracking you in your home or in the street where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

My guess is the vast majority of people appreciate the convenience of automatically getting a photo of themselves on a ride. To pull out another example of putting the tracker in the ears hats for kids, please tag my kid every way you can while we're there. My fear of losing them in a busy park far outweighs my concern that you know I took them on the Pooh Bear ride.

I have no problem with Disney tracking me on their property while I am there. Do we know what happens to the fingerprints and photos after we leave? In isolation, the Disney tracking is innocuous even cool, but it comes with risk that the data will be stored / forwarded to entities of which we are unaware. Sorry if I am unnecessarily alarmist. I visited Disney back a few years ago (pre Snowden) and mortified my wife by declining the fingerprint tracking (had to talk with a 'supervisor'). I am not sure you can decline these days.

This is an important point.

The Magic Band is amazing. We spent our anniversary at Disney World and the thing is a payment method, your park tickets, your room keys, and also holds your fast passes.

I had no expectations of privacy in a public theme park and I'm not sure anyone else should either.

They made the visit so much better. Would use again.

I really enjoyed having the band on my wrist the entire afternoon at the pool and not having to worry about losing my room key in the towel bin or carrying wet cash to the snack bar.

I actually was more impressed with the RFID drink cups and mugs that are rolling out at some of the resorts:

http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/disney-refillable-mugs/

http://www.validfill.com/product/

The article pretty heavily misses a lot of the points that many guests view as a benefit. Had they not been evacauted from splash mountain they would have had a photograph of their exact moment before going down the plume. Similarly certain restaurants know where you're sitting and deliver food based on the magic bands. Recently actually when riding on Haunted mansion it knew we were from California and had a hitch hiking ghost looking to head to California.

It's not to say they're not tracking you, but the tracking especially in such a closed city/community shows some of the positive smooth experiences that can be delivered when you know all those details about a person.

I'm in Disney right now using the band for everything and from the consumer point of view it is great. Don't have any misconceptions about it -- at the "Be Our Guest" lunch you order via touch screen and then they tell you to sit anywhere you want in the cavernous three joined dining halls. Magically your food finds you quickly without ever speaking to a human. Why? Because you're in an enchanted castle, duh!

Magic Band is a great example of consumer tracking done right. The band is not a biometric, it doesn't require an app that tracks you at all other times and it used to actually improve service, not just serve up adds and 10% coupons.

Are you sure the park is not matching your band with photos of you captured by the network of cameras around the park? The band is not biometric, but it enables biometric tracking.

Fingerprint scans are mandatory for all adult guests seeking to enter the parks. The biometric is linked to the ticket permanently to prevent ticket sharing. This is true whether you use the Band or a card at the turnstile.

The article doesn't ask this, but I think it's kind of obvious: is this the future we want everywhere?

The majority of us are already carrying around personally identifiable smartphones with both long and short range antennas. The tech to both do the tracking and to the phones themselves are getting cheaper every year.

Would we be ok going to a local restaurant, tapping to pay and then they just find us? Or with Amazon's (prototype) wander in, put stuff in a bag and wander out stores?

Heck even the just passed "make your ISP data available to marketers" is I'm sure couched in this this same manner: we'll make things easier, we'll show you better ads, etc.

Disneyland feels more like a prototype of what to come than anything else.

Disneyland is a small integrated ecosystem and is entirely voluntary. I think it's quite reasonable for Disney to keep tabs on all of their guests while they're in the park. But that same level of surveillance doesn't belong out in the public.

I went to Disneyworld a month ago. My first thought when they scanned my finger prints was "bet that was forwarded to the government so they can easily unlock my phone"

As for why they do it, it's to make sure you don't share a pass. Buy 2 passes, 2 people go in. 1 person comes out with 2 passes. Goes back in with extra person, repeat.

They don't scan you on the way out. They could but it would be annoying (and maybe illegal?) to have to line up to get out of the parks.

I'm pretty much at a loss for words.. Disneyworld scanned your fingerprints? You let them? What happens if you say no?

> What happens if you say no?

They don't let you in

I can't even really put into words how crazy that is. How long this been going on and why are people putting up with this? Why isn't this a huge controversy? Am I in the minoriy by being completely shocked by this?

I wouldn't let my government do this to me without a court order I could challenge, and there's a children's theme park doing this thousands of times daily with no opposition?

This wouldn't be possible in europe.

I was just thinking that Sea World San Diego took finger prints Las summer when we went. I googled it and on the first result there is a comment from 2007 from someone mentioning the same.

http://www.fodors.com/community/united-states/borrowing-tick...

I'm not full on tinfoil hat, but.. but.. I mean.. Uhh.

WHAT?

Maybe I'm more paranoid than most, but I've definately been getting more defensive about my privacy in the last two years or so. I don't do social media, I at least tell my phone not to do location stuff (I have no idea if it obeys this) and noscript etc etc. Even before that, though, giving fingerprints away without being forced to do so is completely mind bending to me. I would never do that.

Maybe I would have once before I got more jaded about this kind of business, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. I find it especially toxic that they'll refuse entry if you don't do it.. It's making you chose between your crying children and a ruined holiday vs giving away one of the only things that can physically identify you to a random corp.

I used to not care so much about these things, but then I started working for a big marketing/tracking/data broker company. Going from 'Yeah, I know this stuff is going on since I read the tech news' to actually building that stuff and seeing the kind of data avail would make anyone take similar steps..

I wouldn't want my government doing this to me either cause I have to live somewhere and hey, we're all in this together. I don't need to experience Disneyland though, so I'm all right with this policy. I hear they also kick you out if you're too intoxicated, they probably have a lot of policies that would be ludicrous if implemented by real countries.

Well, there are legit reasons for your govt making you do so.. Say you're a suspect in some murder and they have some prints on the weapon; they want to compare with your hands right... That's a reasonable thing for a govt to compel you to provide and we're all pretty much agreed that this is ok.

Private companies taking that data at childrens amusement parks not so much. I'm not sure we can compare that with drunk policies...

If you're worried about people recording your fingerprints, presumably you are careful never to, like... touch anything?

Fingerprints can be taken from loads of things I touch. They're useless if they don't have my fingers to compare them to, and they can only have my fingers with a court order.

Or, I guess, if I want to see daffy duck with the kids... >_<

This is common at places with ticketed entry in the US. Even my old gym used a very similar fingerprint scanner.

Pretty sure the tech is all from the same one or two vendors. They claim that neither the raw fingerprint nor a unique identifier derived from it is stored. Instead, one of seven possible values is computed from it and only that classification is saved. If true, in practice, there is a 1-in-7 chance that your scan will match someone else's.

Resistance is futile.

The fingerprint system has been there for years.

I have been to Disney quite a bit and I find the bands amazing. And yes I realize I am being tracked. But there is something magical when you get on the haunted house ride and the ghosts know you...

Super use of the tech for entertainment.

What could you possibly be doing that is so private on Disney premises and that makes you freak out about tracking? They know you're in the park, they might as well know when you're in the bathroom or eating lunch or taking a ride. It's not like they're tracking you after you leave (or are they?)...

More importantly, they must be pretty aware of the fact that they'll be tracking minors, and all that entails. They know that their lifeblood is their reputation for being utterly family-friendly. At the end of the day, it's just... it's like complaining about being surveilled in a museum.

> What could you possibly be doing that is so private on Disney premises and that makes you freak out about tracking?

I think it's more the principle of the thing. Why would you want to be tagged and tracked like an animal? I wouldn't want to be.

I agree with Edward Snowden: "When you say I don’t care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don’t care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write."

> Why would you want to be tagged and tracked like an animal? I wouldn't want to be.

If that's how you think I should look at it, then, actually, yeah, I do. I have a huge problem with the way some animals are tagged and tracked, so if this bears any resemblance to it, it's only fair we go through it too. Not that it actually does, though.

You've got a huge problem with the way animals are tagged and tracked, but then conclude that people should also be tagged and tracked? That doesn't make any sense. If you've got a problem with it, why aren't you arguing for no tagging and tracking of animals and people?

> I have a huge problem with the way some animals are tagged and tracked

What is the issue with this?

>> I have a huge problem with the way some animals are tagged and tracked

> What is the issue with this?

Totally off-topic, not going to start a discussion on it, sorry.

>Why would you want to be tagged and tracked like an animal?

Because you're paying through the nose to go to Disney and hope they can use the data to improve the visit for the next time.

This is how you normalize tracking. Disney itself is only a mild concern. The problem is that this conditions guests to believe it's normal and safe to carry around tracking devices that record a detailed history of your movements and activities. Even if Disney's tracking is limited only to (public) activities in their parks, the lesson they are teaching will encourage acceptance of other tracking devices that appear similar even if their actual function is different/unknown.

...We're all carrying around smartphones, surely that's how you "normalize tracking"?

> We're all carrying around smartphones

No, we're not. They are popular, but that doesn't extrapolate to "all".

> surely that's how you "normalize tracking"?

Problems can occur in more than one situation. Also, while the actual tracking done by a cellphone is probably worse, many people still do not understand exactly what is being tracked. With Disney's device, tracking is the intended purpose, which may create a larger conditioning effect.

MagicBands are a very handy convenience item. Tracking is not their sole purpose. Most guests are not aware that the bands act as transponders, though there are tiny informational signs posted around the property. MagicBands are also not mandatory, and in fact, cost extra for day guests (they are included if you book a hotel room or get an annual pass).

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9177105

(This is a longer article about the history of the thing.)

If you use android, take a look at https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

What would happen if you snuck in a jammer? Would half the park just shut down?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com