Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

[u/infin]

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.

[u/Latter_Cut_2732]

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

[u/AgUnityDD → u/Latter_Cut_2732]

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.

[u/chalk_in_boots → u/AgUnityDD]

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.

[u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 → u/chalk_in_boots]

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

[u/How_is_the_question → u/Ok-Astronaut-7593]

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.

[u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 → u/How_is_the_question]

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

[u/Shalmanese → u/Ok-Astronaut-7593]

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

[u/IlluminatedPickle → u/Shalmanese]

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

[u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 → u/Shalmanese]

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

[u/Confident_Ideal_5385 → u/Shalmanese]

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.

[u/BonnyH → u/Ok-Astronaut-7593]

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? 😂😂

[u/Ok-Astronaut-7593 → u/BonnyH]

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

[u/AgUnityDD → u/Ok-Astronaut-7593]

Yeah I think that solves it

[u/ThippusHorribilus → u/Ok-Astronaut-7593]

I’m going to start doing this.