There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here
latimes.com
latimes.com
I used to go to that shopping complex a couple of times a month, but now it has been almost 4 years and I have not been back. All of the stores and restaurants I used to frequent have since closed up and moved out anyway, so there isn't much draw. I'm not even sure what is in there now, if anything. I uninstalled the parking app.
Where I live all shopping centers in the town have the same fees for parking, CHF 1 for the first hour then CHF ½ for every half hour. You can pay with an app, for example https://easypark.ch, or by cash at a central parking meter by the entrance which accepts credit cards, too, and even returns change.
It's not really a joy but acceptable.
Charging for parking, then, is nonsensical. It's a cost imposed on your business just like the rent.
You could try to recover your rent/land costs by charging a flat fee for people to enter your shop on foot. Why not? Well, because no-one will come any more.
I've never seen a grocery store with a parking garage (opposed to a parking lot) that wasn't in a city. If the grocery store has a parking garage instead of a parking lot, then it is almost certainly in an urban area and public transit and is within walking distance of many residences and businesses.
This is in fact the case for the particular Trader Joe's in question. Look up "Trader Joes’s at Hollywood and Vine". That neighborhood is easily walkable, has at least some public transit, and their parking garage is within easy walking distance of numerous other businesses.
Bad parking kills many businesses.
If I go to a shop and "the landlord" charges me a fee, or fines me, the effect is exactly the same as if the business were responsible.
Imagine if the landlord whacked up a turnstile and imposed a $1 fee for everyone entering the building.
Same effect. Tons of people would refuse to go on principle, myself included.
You could attempt to unbundle that by charging people an entry fee too.
Why not itemise the electricity bill whilst you're at it, etc.
It's penny pinching and adds friction. I've been to Trader Joe's, if you're going there you're not at all price sensitive.
You need a system to avoid people using the car park as long term car storage or for commuting, that's it.
At least where I live, Trader Joe's is probably the cheapest grocer that isn't explicitly a discount retailer like Grocery Outlet. Something like 80% of TJ products are house brands.
The cost of parking is avoidable. You don't have to drive and park to buy goods in the store. Why should I that walk or bicycle to the store sponsor you driving and parking by paying higher prices so you can park for free?
If you're not paying more for your shopping in an urban location then this is almost always going to be because the costs are amortized over all the stores in a chain.
There is no free lunch, someone ends up paying more than they should somewhere.
Sure, charging an entry fee might make sense if people were hanging out in say a cafe, without buying anything, it was really full and the rent was really high. I've heard that such places exist.
Over here, paying for parking has gotten really easy in the last five years, I think two apps, both work great: Easypark for streets and parking lots, and Moovit for malls. Moovit works automatically with license plate cameras in mall garages and charges you those minimal amounts. Moovit is a completely automatic thing, once you've installed the app, added your credit card and license plate, you never have to touch it again.
None of what you've written sounds convenient, it sounds like a massive pain in the arse. If I do have to pay, I'd rather just stick some cash in a machine on the way out, paying for the time I used then and there and making it impossible to be fined or get stuck messing about with an app when something inevitably goes down.
Cashless systems for physical places should honestly be illegal, it would fix a lot of this scammy nonsense.
The first hour free also means the pedestrian shoppers are most of the time subsidizing my parking. The mall is on top of a train station and multiple tram lines, so there are a lot of pedestrians. The mall is for the large part just restaurants. There is absolutely massive parking garage going multiple levels deep underground, and they are mostly empty.
I wish street parking was also more automated, maybe it would be good if you would get a notification "this will cost X per hour". Parking ticket because you forgot to tap your app is not fun.
Better... for who? I don't know if it's better for either business or society, but it's better for me because I walk to the grocery store and never take my car. If the price of parking is unbundled from the price of food, then I don't have to pay for something I'm not using.
There's no free lunch either way here.
It's somewhat amazing how entitled many car drivers feel to be able to use up space and not having to pay rent for it.
I don't think urban parking makes sense (other than parking in/outside of homes).
You should look up the specific Trader Joe's the article is talking about on google maps. It's smack in the middle of Hollywood, within walking distance of numerous businesses and tourist attractions. Expecting free parking in that neighborhood is completely unreasonable.
The gist is that we use more parking than would be societally optimal because it's “free”, which really just means that non-drivers subsidize drivers. It would be like if every restaurant were expected to be all-you-can-eat: we'd societally consume more food than was optimal.
Not to be outdone, they've taken it to a new level where three different companies own the same lot and you can only tell which company owns the lot by looking to see what color lines you are parked in. Park in the lot, but pay at the wrong kiosk or use the wrong app, you get an extra $50 boot added to your car.
And that's before you get into "need[ing] to monitor people’s unrelated web browsing and links they click" ostensibly in order to "understand how customers are coming to Metropolis" (emphasis added).
When you look at the privacy policy, everything I see there is in line with a somewhat lawyerly description of what every web server receives. IP Address, Carrier (in the rDNS or WHOIS of the IP), HTTP referrers, HTTP User-Agent details, etc. Cross-device tracking is a side effect of logging into their website from multiple devices. Geo-location could be a bit intrusive, but again pretty useful to auto-identify the parking structure that you're in, and browsers allow you to deny the request for that data.
They also collect "cellphone number, email address, license plate number and credit card information, as well as the make, model and year of your vehicle.", but that's needed to provide the service.
The framing here is pretty alarmist, and all of it is based on a read of the privacy policy. A deeper dive would MITM the traffic and actually see if they were collecting data beyond the basics. Without that, the article just ends up on picking on one specific vendor/industry, without helping the reader understand how this vendor compares to other vendors and other apps.
And to assume that companies are profitable is even farther from the reality of the last decade (for better or worse).
One important thing to remember, just because management doesn't plan to do it this year, doesn't mean next year's team won't.
If additionally intrusive data gathering was happening, that would justify an article at this level of alarm. As it is, without additional research or evidence, this is within the scope of the data available to any website host.
- Yes, providing a service that isn't necessary! :-D
- But you can't realistically shop here without,
- Because we decided it's profitable to sell your whereabouts, cross-device phone, email, car data, and financial details to advertisers. So we're forcing you.
I don't think it mentions in the article, but the system takes a photo of your car with you in it and does OCR on the license plates. That's how it identifies you.
Convenience is a tossup, strictly worse for new users, and the cost is higher. Old system was a free/validated anonymous ticket that worked just fine. When a system is forced on people that is 98% to the advantage of a business and 2% to the customer, people are rightly going to get upset.
There is an app:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/metropolis-parking-mobility/id...
That's why dumb devices are getting harder and harder to find. It's much easier to take advantage of users and steal their data with 'smart' devices.
Dumb TVs are the same thing. Hard to find, and surprisingly expensive for the feature set when you do find them.
I don't currently own a TV but if there was a decent dumb TV that was decently affordable and wasn't garbage I might buy one to watch movies on.
Also on the front page
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29218381
Vizio makes more money spying on people who buy TVs than TVs themselves
People love the integration of a single thing in their pocket, but maybe some are getting privacy-conscious enough to have two. Think of it like a TV remote that floats around your coffee table.
In evolutionary biology, there's this idea that "evolution is stingy" – in most cases, a species doesn't have substantially more capability than it needs to survive (human brains are an often cited exception). I kind of expect that, outside of a computer, most product design should be err on the side of being stingy too. If I buy a toaster, I don't need it to be wi-fi connected so it can send me a text notification when the toast is done. I say this satirically, but I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if one existed. Frackin' toasters.
https://www.engadget.com/2017-01-04-griffin-connects-your-to...
The problem is that — in a not so distant future, where every company makes a large slice of its profit from selling user data — Dumb Inc. products will be a lot more expensive than the competition. As people in general are not technically competent to assess the consequences of their digital actions, they will chose the cheaper option. So, perhaps Dumb Inc. won't have mass market appeal, but I guess it could still sell to the techo elite. :)
I also highly doubt that a manufacturer of smart products would pass a "we profit off your data" discount down to consumers. Better they pocket the additional profit and then market it as a convenience for the consumer, which I think is precisely what's happening right now.
Which is why we have the GDPR to prevent this dystopian shite!
The only people on HN who object to the GDPR are those whos scummy business model exploits user data (and those who don't realise GDPR popups only need to exist because advertisers must now ask permission to use your personal data; and so they should!).
Also, as I wrote in my other comment, there are "dumb" appliances on the market - the fact that most people won't search for them is exactly what makes them rare.
I don’t think it’s there. I’d be willing to bet appliances are already a commoditized market and the margins are already painfully thin. “Absolute killing” it would not be.
But the rest of the population just wants smart appliances and Nest or other smart thermostats, Ring/other key hole cameras, Alexa/other smart devices and Facebook/Instagram/TikTok/…
So, unfortunately it’s not going to be a very successful business because the dumb masses have been brainwashed into accepting these smart devices.
I think Framework would be a good test. If they are successful it may imply that there is a large enough market, otherwise all bets are off.
Similarly, a lot of people are willing to buy a Tesla despite all the monitoring that that car does. And so on.
So, it is obvious that a certain percentage of people don't care about privacy. Now, what is dangerous is that a substantial percentage of these people are so called tech-savvy and even people in the tech industry. So, if they don't care despite them being able to understand the privacy issues, the general population which looks at these people for buying advice is certainly not going to care.
I'm not making a general comment; I bought a washer and dryer for the first time in my life a couple years ago, GE branded, and they have no wifi, bluetooth, or even any kind of electronic display.
As it happens, I got them more for their dimensions fitting the space I had than anything else, as GE hasn't had the greatest reputation for reliability in recent years. But so far, they work fine.
Unfortunately in this case the greed of the manufacturer hoping to monetize their UI has ruined an otherwise decent idea(although the device really should function on some basic level without a phone).
They couldn’t bother since there was no recurring revenue stream so you just have to buy a new dishwasher?
Two of the more popular ones, for those interested:
octoprint.org
cnc.js.org
Personally I don’t like those either. I’ve experienced it with printers (which can only be configured initially via USB and some app), 3D printers (configured by putting an SD card in your computer), and other gizmos. They’re all a pain to deal with, especially if your WiFi details change or their IP does.
Some others expect you to connect to THEIR Wi-Fi network instead. Which is also a complete pain.
I don’t mind having an app to make the device more useful, but it needs to have enough controls on the front to use the thing and preferably reconfigure the Wi-Fi if necessary.
> Something simple, like a subset of bluetooth, with easy discoverability
Heck, we've even seen that model simply to use goods you've purchased, as with digital restrictions malignant books, music, videos, and games, where the restrictions-management servers were discontinued and access to the goods (bads) bought requiring them became useless.
Though there is still the prospect of broken or insecure applications. Depending on the specific use case, that might or might not be an issue.
Though there's the casino whose network was hacked through a fish tank:
http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-stole-a-casinos-datab...
In concept, I agree. As you mention, in practice, the apps used nearly always collect data about you and the use of your devices to send back to the mothership.
That makes their use unacceptable to me. Requiring the use of a smartphone app is a showstopper.
But even if that wasn't the case, it seems odd to require me to provide a device of my own in order to use a machine. There are a lot of people who don't own a smartphone at all (and I will join their ranks once my current one dies). Why exclude that part of the market?
But of course, this lessens the control of the manufacturers, and increases the control of the users. So it won't happen until it's up to the manufacturers.
Welll....
The display on my dishwasher technically exists. It is set on the top face of the panel, facing up into the counter, so it cannot be seen when the dishwasher is closed.
I'm not sure who thought of this, but it must have been approved by multiple people to appear on a real, already-manufactured dishwasher. Every one of those people was apparently terrible at their job.
So... for some old timer who pulls up without a smartphone they'll turn them away? Sounds like an empty threat to me.
Edit:
Should have read more before commenting, later in the article:
> customers “also have the option of entering their license plate number into one of four kiosks as a means of validating their parking.”
So it's just a difference of convenience, much ado about nothing.
yeah? AFAIK if you want to shop at an amazon go store, you need mobile app and a registered amazon account. We're also getting there at other places because some establishments/jurisdictions are requiring proof of vaccination (ie. signed QR code).
What if Amazon is the only shop for miles?
This is an entirely different situation from a legal and social point of view.
1.https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/04/parkmobile-breach-expose...
A few years ago, I went to a local Shake Shack and found they replaced their cashiers with kiosks. But placing an order requires me to give them my phone number, supposedly so they can text me when my order was ready. This should have been a very simple transaction: I give them money, and they give me burger. That's it. No need to get tech BS involved in things.
If Shake Shack is really texting me that my order us ready, it's going to a prison pay phone a dozen states away.
It's still 2021. There's no way I'd go into a Shake Shack without one!
It is not just collecting the information, it is also treating customers like idiots and with total contempt. I never set foot in that store again.
There should be a oath (like doctors) for software professionals. I don’t think it will practically change anything, but at least it will create a tiny bit of awareness. People who code shit like this parking app should really ask themselves if it is worth it
"Required form fields" are one of those great power/great responsibility things.
Some cashiers were diligent about the data collection but many, probably most, had a similar approach to mine.
Retail workers are already in a shitty job, no point in making it worse
Comically, it seems many others use this as I frequently find loyalty points already there.
I’d like to find the club of likeminded folks.
Sadly more places are requiring validation.
It’s also funny when telemarketers from other countries aren’t familiar and accept it as a real number.
By politely pointing out the absurdity, we can maybe raise a tiny bit of awareness. I am sure at least a handful of people behind me in the line noticed.
I hear you though. I failed to receive a flight ticket because the airline accepted but could not use an address with a + before the @; and when I tried to use a website to prove my identity to get a local SIM after moving county, customer service claimed to only support Windows and Android and wouldn’t help me when I connected via a Mac and my phone was from Apple; and the local public transport app didn’t let me buy tickets when it was installed on an iPad, only on a phone; and a few days ago I got an invoice with “click here to pay” text, except the invoice is an image and there is no hyperlink.
Jerry: Now why would a junior high school want to screw with my head?
Cosmo Kramer: Why does Radio Shack ask for your phone number when you buy batteries? I don't know.
And they wonder why Amazon is dominating retail. Definitely heard that food and parking are different.
Related, but when I am forced to read the number instead of just typing it in, I consciously say "Eight Six Seven Five Three Zero Nine" instead of "Oh"!
I should clarify i wasn't referring to myself - I have a mobile (deGoogled, at least). But there do exist people who don't want or need a mobile device.
but also, have no qualms about providing false information. you have no legal obligation in most cases to provide accurate info, and companies often employ deception in trying to elicit oversharing private info anyway.
We would ask during a return and require it. When buying anything with cash it was optional. The sales staff had to maintain an 80% ratio per day.
These private parking things are similar, there is a network of near real-time alerting about vehicle location for repo men.
Personal anecdote time: Recently went to a car park that had to pay by phone and no phone signal (in the UK if it's relevant).
This was obviously a common problem, so they provided an open WiFi network limited to just the parking website.
Unfortunately, I had to create an account to be able to pay to park, and the account creation was gated by a Google captcha that.. wouldn't load as it was blocked.
So no way to pay to park, and a crowd of confused tourists all trying to work out how the hell to park without getting a fine.
Fun times
I got a parking ticket from the first parking lot we parked in on that trip, within just a few moments of walking out of the lot.
I had screenshots and everything that showed that I paid, and the language the company used on its tickets and also appeals process was completely foreign to me, an American.
Total nightmare but after many rounds of back and forth I was able to successfully appeal, and then get them to explain to me in more plain language that it actually was successful.
Before you needed simply cash to pay for parking.
Now you need a phone with a non-empty battery, mobile internet connection and a digital mean of payment provided by a third party that takes its share.
I think I am the only customer at my gym that uses a physical fob.
Push back. Say "no, sorry, I can't install apps". Or use a dumbphone for a month per year.
They do this because they can get away with it.
Make them bring you a printed menu.
If you need an app on my phone to take my money for normal, everyday transactions, you don't need my money.
Side tangent - I used to be incorporated as a consultant, and think I need to be again because of crap like this, so it can own things for me. I haven't had a car in a long time, and think I need to lease one from MeCo instead of buying one.
So, recently when I had to do something with DMV I just decided to go a little early and use the kiosks they have inside rather than use the online version which mandated that I link my DMV account and share all my personal info, the serious kind that DMV needs and not just name/email, with ID.me
Not sure how long this will be an option, but let's see.
Getting a license or vehicle registration information is sold in certain states.
[0]: https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/02/20/texas-dmv-selling-driver...
I highly recommend getting a PO Box or a PMB and using that as your primary address on your drivers license, for this exact reason.
In this case, you are required to also give the address you physically live at, but this information is not eligible to be shared through the above process.
Just to add to above comment, if the record is not for self (i.e. self owned car or own driving license), then it can be fetched only for "permissible use". The bullet points are:
Motor vehicle or driver safety and theft
Legitimate business
Civil criminal administrative or arbitral processing
Insurance purposes
Employer of commercial drivers
All other uses permitted by CA law.
The pdf form at https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/request-for-record-inform... in section 4 has more details.
DMV mailed me a licence with street name and "Apartment <my-PMB-number>" even though it wasn't an apartment and I lived elsewhere. That address worked perfectly for years - banks, passport application, etc, everyone accepted it. Online ordering from sites that specifically said "we don't ship to PO Boxes" also worked no problem.
If I ever move back to California I'll definitely do that again. I was 100% truthful on the DMV license application, it's just that they chose to interpret my mailing address as a residential apartment.
The issue is that many validations leave the state for things like commercial carrier endorsements, etc.
North Korea, lol. Excuse me as I go get some $0.50 mouth orgasm street tacos.
It's good that they are exposed and people discuss them in order to (hopefully) reach the politicians, but none of this is surprising at all.
So, TJ's are fully responsible for the parking arrangement experience even though, as they say, they are just tenants and its their landlords who are imposing this. Those facts don't make up for the bad experience.
Its still TJ's fault and at that location they have bad parking. Its now up to them to fix their bad parking situation. If they can.
Others have pointed out the landlord could put in a turnstile and charge $1 per entry. Indirect methods, eg tracking apps, are the equivalent. Refer to the parking situation.
The ball is now in their court to figure out what to do.
I hate to break it to them, but the LA Times has a more than 7,000-word privacy policy with the exact same pitfalls.
- Collecting IP address: check
- Collecting geo-location and device identifiers: check
- Cross-device tracking: check
- Tracking referring and exit URLs: check
- Third-party cookies for ad targeting: check
In addition, the Times' privacy policy allows it to collect a whole bunch of other information about you - for example they can collect your "race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, religious affiliation, military or veteran status, nationality, ancestry or ethnicity, and political opinions" or buy it from data brokers and use that to serve you ads or sell it to whomever they please.
Now I'm not suggesting that the Times shouldn't point out privacy flaws in other companies' products. But perhaps a sentence or two disclosing that they have the same flaws would be in order.
(Any plausible definition of "news outlet" works here, as long as it pays the author and reaches an audience.)
Does this require some kind of vulnerability exploit? I would hope that apps can't extract this kind of information from other unrelated apps.
In China you just scan a QR code from a screen to pay and leave, but I think that could be replaced with a credit card reader or contactless payment.
I don't see why it requires downloading an app.
> “This isn’t a TJ’s thing,” said Tara Miller, a Trader Joe’s spokesperson. “It’s being implemented by the landlord
I feel like the headline is misleading and shouldn't mention Trader Joe's if it isn't Trader Joe's direct fault.
Anyhow this totally involves TJ and they will need to do something about it, as more customers will get pissed.
They probably will have their legal team take a look at the agreement for this location now that it's made the news, but can we cut them a little slack before fetching the pitch forks?
Just say you don't own a mobile phone and that you're willing to pay parking with cash or credit card.
The ball is now in their court to figure out what to do.
Trader Joe’s is subjecting their customers to this and should be held responsible if if it was through their landlord. They still are an accomplice to this data harvesting by the fact they have a business relationship with the company doing this.
Did you guys remove Facebook from the Cambridge Analytics scandal post? After “they” weren’t the ones doing right?
When users disagree about which title is better, we have to make a call. My call in this case is that (a) it's really not that big a deal and (b) it's best to go by HN's first principle, which is that we try to optimize for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). It's much better to err on the side of curiosity than indignation.
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The hypocrisy is strong with this one.
Here you go, bullshit-free link: https://archive.md/BG1PM
There is a kernel of a news story here, but blaming it on Trader Joe's in the headline, only to retract it half-way through the story? The section with big scary words about how terrible it is to log an IP address?
Is it just me or is this poor writing? I thought something had to be true in order to be justified. They "attempted to justify" or "rationalized" but they didn't "justify". I know this is nit-picky of me but this is a newspaper with professional writers and editors. Maybe my understanding of the word usage is too narrow.
So why does the headline imply the exact opposite? Because it gets clicks of course, but this is why people hate and distrust the media any more. Stop lying.
It's pretty clear that this is about an issue with the parking garage at a specific Trader Joes. Whether the retailer or their landlord came up with the stupid scheme doesn't really make a difference to the customer.
Of course they do. They have a contract with the landlord. They rent the space and pay for parking. If you are a customer of a retailer, why would you go complain to their landlord?
> Why highlight that one specifically?
Why not? Journalists can either cover something in breadth, or in depth, and in this case the journalist decided to go in depth on a specific location.
TJ does care that it's customers want to come to the store, and they do have some power during lease negotiations. Making it bad PR for Trader Joes really is a good way to exerting pressure to get the landlord's rule changed.
For this specific parking garage, the TJ is the most major tenant, so they would have the most leverage over getting the rules changed.
The appropriate place to complain would be the landlord. TJ’s didn’t choose the parking vendor and likely has no say.
TJ could ask the landlord friendly to not require the app, they could sue them, or maybe they could even withhold some payments until the owner of the building complies with their agreement again.
And I really doubt that the landlord wants to risk pissing off a major tenant over a parking app. I don't know what the market is currently like in LA, but in my part of the world lots of commercial spaces are free and landlords seem to be struggling to find tenants after businesses closed during the pandemic.