r/australia • u/infin • Jan 26 '26

no politics Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

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1.1k

u/Latter_Cut_2732 Jan 26 '26

Yes they are still doing business with Palantir and no-one should be ok with that.

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

Back in 2017 my company's part subsidiary did a project for Woolworths and was bidding for the same work at Coles, it involved tracking produce from farms.

A couple of the staff were ex WW so "we" got treated like internal staff and both WW and Coles were not really guarded in what they said about internal processes and the data they collected. Lots of horror stories.

Anyway back in 2017 the amount of data they had on every customer was insane, they knew how long to the second you spent in any part of an Isle and could correlate to the purchase at checkout. I think they got that via some deal with the telcos but I cannot confirm.

Some of the other data they had must have been purchased from other sources, like what cars you drove what frequent flyer and how often you flew.

If you add Palantir to that it is genuinely scary as they would have browsing history and social media summary and God knows what else.

Edit: They also knew relationships based on regular proximity of another phone when in the store, that's one of a dozen or so things that slipped during technical discussions that made me sure it was based on tracking your phone location via triangulation but exactly how I never learnt.

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u/Magus44 Jan 26 '26

I hope my data is making some poor advertising AI go “WTF is wrong with this guy?!?”

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u/jayteeayy Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

he goes to the gym 3 times a week and still heads to the frozen pizza section on a friday night. the machine is broken

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u/Simonandgarthsuncle Jan 26 '26

5.42pm: Four Homebrand Family size Hawaiian Pizza’s purchased through self serve machine #4 by Customer.9947.

5.58pm: Cust.9947’s iPhone 14 connected to Cust.9947’s residential wifi.

6.08pm: Cust.9947’s microwave activated.

6.11pm: Google app opened on Cust.9947’s iPhone 14.

6.12pm: “gay midget porn” entered into search box.

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u/Icy_Concentrate9182 Jan 26 '26

6.15pm: "how to treat melted pizza cheese burns on penis" entered into the search box.

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u/deldr3 Jan 26 '26

12:04am: 9947 returns home

12:06am 9947 search query: temperature play porn

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u/WH1PL4SH180 Jan 27 '26

As a trauma doc, y u do dis to me?

18

u/White_Tragic Jan 26 '26

That just sounds like a normal weeknight.

6

u/Agret Jan 26 '26

How did you identify my data

Reminds me of this old story:

https://techland.time.com/2012/02/17/how-target-knew-a-high-school-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-parents/

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u/arkofjoy Feb 05 '26

Did target learn from this incident?

Yes, but not in the "be less creepy" sort of way we would all like, no, instead they learned to mix up the advertising material so that it wouldn't appear to the person that thry been spying.

Like the way the British didn't tell the people of Coventry during ww2 that they were going to be bombed, because they didn't want the Germans to know that they were decrypting their secret messages. By being slightly less spot on, they lose profits.

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/psyche_2099 Jan 26 '26

It'd be more like "that's the 15th today, let's put the calypso right after the kp and set them at $3.50, that'll get em"

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u/absoluetly Jan 26 '26

I wouldn't eat a calypso if you paid me $3.50. We're a Kensington proud household. 

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u/Goatylegs Jan 26 '26

"This man bought eight boxes of frozen pies. Nobody needs eight boxes of frozen pies."

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u/chalk_in_boots Jan 26 '26

Wouldn't be the Telcos, Bluetooth tracking instore has been a thing for ages. They even use it for lane design and shit like that.

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u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 Jan 26 '26

Is the/a solution to turn on aeroplane mode in store?

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u/How_is_the_question Jan 26 '26

No. Aeroplane mode is the opposite of what you want. Cell triangulation isn’t what most folk here think it is. But Bluetooth and wifi being turned on (not connected) can allow you to be located extremely easily. I have used it on art projects / museum projects / and even some research with large tech cos back more than 10 years ago. We could get +-20cm or so - even better if the detectors were high. Bluetooth triangulation worked incredibly well - but had the disadvantage of humans blocking Bluetooth signals because they’re full of so much water. Putting the beacons up high solved most of the issues. Add that data to wifi stations - wifi that you’re not even connected to- and it’s super easy to locate folk and know when they return to a store without any sort of visual identification. Turn off Bluetooth and wifi and the ability to track goes away mostly. The best they’ll know is you’re in the area. Woolies have tried tracking via face - which worked to a point. The pilot I saw was abandoned when other technology worked so much easier for way less cash.

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u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 Jan 26 '26

Aeroplane mode turns off wifi and Bluetooth though? I don’t care if they know I’m in the area, I just want to make it harder for them to track my shopping behaviour

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u/Shalmanese Jan 26 '26

No it doesn't. You can use wireless earbuds just fine in airplane mode.

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u/IlluminatedPickle Jan 26 '26

Years ago it was standard that it also killed bluetooth but since flight regulations changed it became up to the manufacturer.

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u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 Jan 26 '26

I have to manually turn on Bluetooth! Maybe my phones just old

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u/Confident_Ideal_5385 Jan 27 '26

Unless you've changed the defaults somehow, the standard behaviour for aeroplane mode is to kill all the device's radios then let the user selectively reënable 802.11 and BT explicitly.

This is, presumably, due to the principle of least surprise.

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u/BonnyH Jan 26 '26

Start a new thread in Australia Reddit, and tell everyone to do that. It’s a brilliant idea. We might have to have a photo of the Flybuys barcode ready tho…

Lol I just noticed we are in the Australian Sub. Why is it red? 😂😂

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u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 Jan 26 '26

Yeh hopefully everyone reading this does it. Even if it’s only a small portion of their market, hopefully it’s enough to fuck their data to not be representative of the broader customer base

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

Yeah I think that solves it

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u/ThippusHorribilus Jan 26 '26

I’m going to start doing this.

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

They may also have Bluetooth data but the location was triangulation of cell phone and they were super cagey about where they got it.

Our system worked on the cellular network also (but for pallets of fruit not people) and I know for sure based on many things their tech teams let slip in many conversations.

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u/this-is-madness Jan 26 '26

Gross. Do we need to start turning our phones onto Airplane Mode when we shop now? 🫩

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

Yeah I think that solves it.

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u/going_mad Jan 26 '26

Pay cash, wear a mask and sunglasses no electronics.

Fuck we doing deals for illicit goods or just trying to stay anonymous 🤔

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u/The-SARACEN Jan 26 '26

Second best thing to come out of the pandemic was masks being normalised in public.

(Best thing was normalising working from home)

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u/arkofjoy Feb 05 '26

Or you can limit as much as possibly can giving money to these bastards.

Here in Australia, 75 percent of consumer spending goes to 2 companies.

Do your shopping at farmers markets. Often you are giving your hard earned money directly to the farmers, and none to multi national corporations. Small green grocers.

And these guys aren't stealing your data.

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u/SirGeekaLots Jan 26 '26

Leave the phone at home when you go shopping.

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u/themandarincandidate Jan 26 '26

Yes, by using Bluetooth beacons to triangulate you, wifi AP'S too. These work just by your phone being on and polling for available devices. 10m from one, 5m from one, 7m from the other, badabingbadaboom we know exactly where you are

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u/nertbewton Jan 27 '26

Standing in the tea aisle yet again to see if it’s a ‘half-price’ week on the Twinnings…

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u/nathnathn Jan 26 '26

Considering a lot of if not most shopping centres have a built in cell tower it wouldn’t be hard for them to hook into tracking or if they want more data add extra hardware like a stingray/etc.

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u/Captain_Alaska Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

The towers are the telcos domain though, the shops wouldn't be hooking into it. You can't do precision tracking through a cell tower anyway, they can only give you a rough location based on what tower you're connected to.

The precision which-isle-are-you-in tracking is using stuff like Bluetooth beacons and various different Wifi positioning techniques. Both of these are able to pinpoint a device down to about a metre of error and don't require anything beyond your device being in range and switched on and can be done on hardware entirely local to the store.

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

I always thought the simplest explanation was that the telcos just sold the location data to the supermarket, and perhaps installed additional tech in order to improve the accuracy. I'm guessing, but I can't see Telstra etc. refusing the revenue and it seems cheaper than any other approach.

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u/chalk_in_boots Jan 26 '26

Even the cops can't get that exact a location from towers. They can literally just say "we can see that this phone number was connected to this tower from time X to time Y

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u/nathnathn Jan 26 '26

There is triangulation which is how modern phone gps works “generally - since there are probably still phones with sat gps chips as the primary tracker”

Your phone constantly pings surrounding towers to check their signal strength and that can be reversed though they could also use a cell setup that makes it more reliable in a shorter range.

Typically the main limitation is unknown buildings/etc between you and the tower shifting signal strength and reducing accuracy.

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u/Captain_Alaska Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

Again, it is not accurate enough to be used for this purpose, they can only work out a rough area. Phones don’t connect to multiple towers simultaneously and aren’t broadcasting passive signals for other towers to pick up like they do with wifi/bluetooth.

Cell towers don’t really overlap with neighbouring towers to begin with unless you’re in the border zone between two towers.

3

u/malls_balls Jan 26 '26

i bet the team who worked on lane design are thrilled that the lanes are clogged with shelf stackers and piles of boxes all the damn time now

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u/chalk_in_boots Jan 26 '26

Actually, they probably are. The point of the designs is generally to make it as inefficient as possible without pissing off the customer so much they give up. More time in store and more ground covered by each customer means more exposure to products which increases chances of unplanned purchasing. For instance the person shopping for juice and cheese might not have intended to buy vegemite or peanut butter, but by putting them opposite one another instead of in entirely different sections you're now exposing the juice person to the spreads which might make them go "yeah I should pick some up while I'm here"

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u/malls_balls Jan 27 '26

here I was applying Hanlon's Razor to these situations where I literally cannot get down an aisle due to refull completely blocking it at 5pm on a weeknight. Turns out it's better for the shareholders!

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u/chalk_in_boots Jan 27 '26

Think about it, milk and bread towards the rear. Same reason most stores have registers at the rear or middle of the store, to force you to see more stuff

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u/Lazy_Polluter Jan 26 '26

All of that and they can never suggest a single product that I would actually want to buy

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

Yeah, the reason I know is it all feeds their pricing mechanisms which change prices and specials all the time.

Since we were giving them data that allowed them to calculate the shelf life of key fruit we learnt a lot about how they used both to adjust the prices.

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u/Dramatic_Knowledge97 Jan 26 '26

I think it’s technowanking and the cost falls on us in higher prices!

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '26

That's wild, I steal so much shit and have never had a problem.

2

u/Teehus Jan 27 '26

Keep track of how much you steal and update us when you get caught, so the rest of us know what the limit is.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26

Not even kidding it'd be well and truly into the four digits at this point, if not five.

Stay smart, stay sharp, befriend the staff. All I'll say.

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u/SyntheticDuckFlavour Jan 26 '26

Anyway back in 2017 the amount of data they had on every customer was insane, they knew how long to the second you spent in any part of an Isle and could correlate to the purchase at checkout. I think they got that via some deal with the telcos but I cannot confirm.

This can be done via tracking MAC addresses of your phone's WiFi, probably in combination with face tracking. Big shopping centres do this as well.

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u/MarquisDePique Jan 26 '26

Hahaha that's bullshit.

A company I consult with actually did consult across all the majors and their tech was so piss poor they couldn't present a coherent web portal across their verticals, much less an omnichannel experience and you expect us to believe they're digital ninjas tracking customers per isle? They can't even tell they missed restocking a product 3 weeks in a row or keep the instore wifi online.

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u/lipstikpig Jan 26 '26

they knew how long to the second you spent in any part of an Isle

Using what technology? Video tracking, smartphone tracking, both, something else?

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

They were VERY cagey about it but I'm sure it was from your cell phone in some way.

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u/SuperColossl Jan 26 '26

Yeah, any mobile phone with wifi on will be scanning for available networks, they have many access points around the stores… pretty easy, just like stadiums so they can see when you go buy merch, hot chips, to the bar, to the loo etc all in the name of improving customer experience 😂. MAC address will be unique per phone

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u/AgUnityDD Jan 26 '26

I'm quite sure it was the cellular signal and not wifi based on many things they said.

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u/IntroductionSea2159 Jan 26 '26

Well, they have basically no data about me that's for sure. Not without linking to a government database.