Until recently, Wi-Fi in shopping malls wasn’t even a concept — let alone free. Now it’s everywhere. On the surface, it’s a value-add that saves megabytes while browsing the aisles.
But this free Wi-Fi often shares more information about your shopping habits and movements than you realise.
Free Wi-Fi in malls is as ubiquitous as paid parking, not because developers feel generous, but, depending on whom you ask, because some have found ways to turn this liability into a data-generating asset.
Mall developers have allegiances towards profit margins, and do this by making shoppers happy. Free Wi-Fi helps — but if that free Wi-Fi helps them refine store locations, charge more rent, improve pedestrian flow and target customers with third-party adverts, they’ll do it gladly.
And while Wi-Fi can enhance shopping, especially in middle- and low-income areas underserved by fibre and 4G, a lot is hiding in the terms and conditions.
Often, whenever you connect to a free Wi-Fi portal in a mall, you agree to be profiled, tracked and monetised in multiple ways. This often starts with a pre-login data-mining survey, but it continues in less obvious and arguably more nefarious ways, including real-time tracking through the developers’ properties.
Connect to wireless internet in some malls, and they’ll know where you shop and for how long, which entrances and exits you use, your favourite time to shop and how long you spend in queues, among many other data points.
In an ideal world, this would be anonymised, aggregated data, but few make this promise in their privacy policies.
This practice, known as mobile location analytics, is not uncommon — and it’s been a boon for developers, which no longer have to resort to arduous manual or less granular ways to enhance their properties and profits.
Canal Walk’s Wi-Fi, for example, requires shoppers to agree that the property group “may access, read, preserve and process any information” to achieve various objectives.
Specialist retail real estate investment trust Vukile, which has a R40bn property portfolio, has become a master at this. Its portfolio includes malls in South Africa’s middle- to lower-income segments, including Daveyton Shopping Centre, Dobsonville Mall and East Rand Mall. And in a recent release, Vukile said central to its success is using a “bouquet” of data tools to “get to know” visitors. Chief among these data-gathering tools is its free Wi-Fi, a popular addition at many of its malls run by subsidiary Connect Waya-Waya.
Connect Waya-Waya dangles the free internet lure behind a questionnaire and app that builds comprehensive profiles on shoppers — storing details such as the distance travelled to reach the mall, favourite stores and preferred brands.
“Our in-depth data gives us the ability to slice and dice information depending on what we want to achieve and the task at hand,” Marijke Coetzee, Vukile’s director of marketing and communications, says in a press release. “We have multiple levels of information coming from a variety of tools, including mobile, internet, geopositioning technologies, psychographics and other resources.”
Connect Waya-Waya users also allow the developer to track their precise locations, even when the app or Wi-Fi runs in the background. And the company reserves the right to share data with third parties, including business partners, research firms and social media advertising services. It will keep this information for “as long as necessary”.
This is by no means unusual, even in South Africa. Hyprop, whose retail developments include malls at Canal Walk, Hyde Park Corner and Rosebank, has similar clauses in some of its free Wi-Fi terms and conditions.
Canal Walk’s Wi-Fi, for example, requires shoppers to agree that the property group “may access, read, preserve and process any information” to achieve various objectives, including tracking location in the centre — or any other in the Hyprop portfolio. Hyprop can also share the data with third-party service providers, research firms and marketing partners.
For the privacy-savvy, this is hardly new or surprising — similar terms are baked into most apps we use daily. And developers say this improves their service offerings to benefit customers.
But for shoppers who’d prefer to keep their commercial activities to themselves, it’s crucial to read the fine print, says Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr’s Sadia Rizvi.
“Users of public Wi-Fi in malls should carefully review the terms, conditions and privacy notices before connecting. This will help them understand how their personal data may be collected, used or shared. Additionally, employing a virtual private network can offer an extra layer of security on public networks, and users should remain cautious about the information they access or share online. Regularly updating devices and security settings is also recommended for better protection,” says Rizvi.
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