This has been available for several months now. To answer a few questions I've seen, it uses a typical captive portal approach, so an unencrypted WiFi hotspot. Upon connection, you are redirected to an encrypted site with embedded Facebook account verification, at which point you can go wherever the Internet service lets you. The router typically has content filtering and also tracks Internet usage (bandwidth, visited sites, etc) as well as limits on visit length etc.
It is a useful option for merchants, as customers expect WiFi for free. Further, they expect it to be fast and that doesn't expose them to security risks. In other words, this gets expensive and difficult to manage. There are great solutions out there already, but they cost money - so the business case is based on marketing data. Email authentication would work, but it is difficult to gain much insight about customers, also you would need to give people access to their email server to setup their authentication. SMS doesn't work for people who don't have cell phones, or if there is poor coverage - also marketing data would be very difficult to gain. So, Social Media authentication (Facebook) turns out to be a really great option.
Obviously you have the choice not to use the service, but this isn't going away. Industry codes of conduct need to be set and I don't think they have. Privacy laws need to be understood and enforced. Retailer and coffee shop activities with this data haven't caused me much concern, but Facebook is another story.
If your business depends on WiFi (e.g. Coffee Shop), this could potentially hurt business. Only ~50-70% of US Internet users use Facebook and that is dropping.
As a business owner I'd be concerned about alienation. Facebook is far from universal and many avoid it (especially the younger crowd).
What's interesting is that this study is an extrapolation (n=5112), but it suffers from selection bias in the sense that the people who would avoid using social networks would also like just hang up on the survey caller (I hung up on 4 this past month).
Add that to all the fluff-piece/marketroid sounding "survey results" like this:
"Read more about Facebook activity and Facebook “power users” in our report, Why most Facebook users get more than they give"
...pretty much make me wonder what questions they asked, and how much the prodded the recipients of the call to ask if they used social networking.
Surveys should state how many calls they placed successfully in order to achieve the (n) of respondents. That's information that's being thrown out.
More likely: there will be no hybrid approach and you'll see a piece of paper tacked to the bulletin board: "House throwaway Facebook account login for those without an account."
I've been in a coffee shop that does this. You can either set the password yourself or log in via facebook. Don't remember the exact workflow, but it's possible.
The main thing here that I didn't realize is that it seems there is ALWAYS an option to skip checking in, either by clicking "Skip checkin" or by getting the code from the cashier.
Does the system let you create a new facebook account or only login with an existing one?
If I were to see this system in place, I'd just create a new fake facebook account. So long as the system doesn't have some draconian 'log in with an account older than 1 month with 10 friends' type thing, I don't think I'd mind, and I'm solidly in the 'facebook is evil' crowd.
Doesn't draconian normally mean excessive? It wouldn't be draconian considering you're proposing to engage in the exact abuse such a measure would be meant to fix.
In the sense that it violates a social contract? That is, WIFI access in exchange for repping this spot to your friends in however minor a fashion? In the sense of behavior that you as a service provider wish to prevent? Yeah, in all those senses, it is "abuse."
To me, "abuse" is a term with pretty strong connotations, and in some cases legal ramifications (e.g. "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act"). We're living in an environment where "exceeding authorized access" (whatever that means) carries the potential for decades-long prison sentences.
If I think about how we use that word in other contexts: "spousal abuse", "drug abuse", "sexual abuse", I find it quite a stretch to apply the same term to giving a bogus email address to a marketing firm.
I think you overlooked that they violated the social contract first by requiring you to submit to surveillance, so all I am doing is to protect me from their abuse.
So they have to give you free WiFi with no strings, stipulations, or benefit to them?
You're free to not get on the WiFi if you don't want to, and frankly if you're hopping on any public WiFi, you've more or less lost any practical claim to privacy in the first place.
That might be your opinion, but I think you are wrong. And not only that, but where I live you would even be legally wrong. If you open your access point for public use here and you then go and look at other people's traffic, that is illegal and you can go to jail for it.
And no, they don't have to give me free WiFi - they just have to not snoop on me. Just try to transfer your argument to a scenario that doesn't involve WiFi or facebook, but rather, say, tap water and as a prerequisite you have to confess belief in Allah. Illegal? Certainly not. Totally inappropriate? I would say so.
You see, this is not a legal argument, it's about ethics, about what makes a society worthwhile to live in, not about what the minimal standards are that we enforce using state power.
They are legally and morally permitted to make snooping on your Internet traffic part of what you have to agree to in order to use their WiFi.
The ability for a person to set the terms in which others interact with his private property is what makes this society worthwhile to live in. People can't force their way into your stuff without you setting conditions for that use.
And you're correct that looking at other people's traffic is illegal. It's illegal where I come from too.
There is no such thing as "ethically permitted". Ethics is not about being allowed or not being allowed to do things, but about how to do things in such a way that it's a nice way to live together. You see, the general principle that you have control over what you own is one that in general makes a nice way to live together. That does not mean, though, that any conditions you technically might be able to set also make for a nice way to live together. If you have tons of bread, say, and your neighbour is starving, you sure can set as a condition that he has to cut of his left arm before you give him bread, and he obviously is free to refuse your offer. But I hope you would not consider treating your neighbour that way to be the ethically right thing to do that would make for a generally nice way to live in society.
Oh, and by the way, there even are legal restrictions on the kinds of conditions you can set, at least where I live. If you reserve the right to cut off your neighbour's left arm after he has accepted your bread, for example, you would not be able to enforce that contract. And you wouldn't get your bread back either.
As I think that the ability to communicate privately is similary important as protection from bodily harm, I would think it would be appropriate to have similar norms as far as snooping on communication is concerned - and even where they are not legal norms, they would still make good ethical norms.
So, no, noone should be able to force you to provide access to your WiFi, but still, if you do provide access, you should go to jail if you do listen in, with contract clauses allowing you to do so being unenforcable.
I disagree. Well, strictly speaking, asking for identifying information might be OK, but storing it or communicating it to other parties is not, at least not without some justification why that is needed.
Control over your personally identifiable information is similarly important in the modern world as is control over your property, and where the two come into conflict, appropriate solutions have to be found.
https://www.google.com/search?q=draconian Has the word "excessive" in the definition. I think it's at a minimum connoted in most applications of the word. Anyway, it doesn't matter how it's defined, I was only trying to understand whether the OP meant "excessive" or just "something I don't like."
I choose the word draconian because I thought it was the best word to describe the idea I was trying to convey. If I had to rephrase, I suppose that all of 'strict', 'harsh' and 'excessive' would be fair words to use in describing it.
As to your original comment, it can be both draconian and effective. The requirement could be that in addition to your facebook account, you also must upload a photo of yourself, holding government-issued ID, standing in front of the store, etc etc. That would make it even harder to use the wifi anonymously (abuse their system), but would clearly be a draconian measure.
" … it uses a typical captive portal approach, so an unencrypted WiFi hotspot. Upon connection, you are redirected to an encrypted site with embedded Facebook account verification, at which point you can go wherever the Internet service lets you. "
I'm not eagerly awaiting the WiFi Pineapple plugin that impersonates this to phish for Facebook login credentials.
It is a useful option for merchants, as customers expect WiFi for free. Further, they expect it to be fast and that doesn't expose them to security risks. In other words, this gets expensive and difficult to manage. There are great solutions out there already, but they cost money - so the business case is based on marketing data. Email authentication would work, but it is difficult to gain much insight about customers, also you would need to give people access to their email server to setup their authentication. SMS doesn't work for people who don't have cell phones, or if there is poor coverage - also marketing data would be very difficult to gain. So, Social Media authentication (Facebook) turns out to be a really great option.
Obviously you have the choice not to use the service, but this isn't going away. Industry codes of conduct need to be set and I don't think they have. Privacy laws need to be understood and enforced. Retailer and coffee shop activities with this data haven't caused me much concern, but Facebook is another story.