Tag: apple patent

Mobile ads at Apple may be based on what you can afford

| July 22, 2015

The tech giant has now patented a tool that would display advertisements based on how much money a user has.

Reports are now showing that Apple has patented a new tool that would make it possible for mobile ads to display only products and services that should be considered affordable to the individual user of that device, according to their own banks.

This mobile marketing strategy would target people based on their incomes and credit card balances.

It is already common practice for marketers to obtain information about the kinds of products that smartphone and tablet users have the greatest likelihood of purchasing based on the sites that they visit and other interactions that they have with their devices. Physical location, gender, and age can all play an important role in decision making when it comes to the types of products and services that you will buy, and they will also impact the kinds of ads that will be displayed on your device screen. However, this type of information could soon have an even larger influence on the mobile ads that you are seeing than has been the case in the past.

The idea is that the mobile ads won’t just be for the types of things that we want, but for what we can actually afford.

Mobile Ads Based On What You Can AffordAfter all, if someone has a budget of $100 available to them, then serving them a mobile advertisement for a $900 outfit won’t do anyone all that much good; not the consumer and not the advertiser.

Now, Apple has received a U.S. patent in order to try to repair this issue. They intend to do this by checking into the credit card balance of a user in order to be able to display mobile marketing that is more appropriate to their available funds. The description and illustration of the patent that was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, described it as a “method and system for targeted advertising of goods and services to users of mobile terminals.”

It looks as though it would have to be an opt-in program (though that is not necessarily confirmed), to ensure that those individuals will be shown mobile ads only for products and services that they will be able to afford, based on their own banking information.

New Apple mobile security patent could send fingerprints to the cloud

| January 21, 2015

A new filing has been spotted that could bring the data from Touch ID to other devices via the cloud.

The US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent filing from Apple that could have to do with part of its mobile security feature that collects fingerprints in order to unlock devices and conduct other functions through certain iPhone models.

The filing was called “Finger biometric sensor data synchronization via a cloud computing device and related methods”.

The patent described a method of recording an individual’s fingerprints by way of the Touch ID mobile security sensor from Apple, so this information could then be uploaded to the cloud and synced with other Apple devices. The sensor necessary for Touch ID has been built into Apple technology in its smartphones since the iPhone 5S, and in the iPads that have been released since that time in 2013. The sensor allows a device owner to use his or her fingerprints in order to access the device. However, more recently, it also became an identity verification feature when making purchases through the new mobile wallet system, Apple Pay.

This potential change to the mobile security feature is meant to help to make the system more convenient.

Mobile Security - Cloud TechnologyApple described in the patent filing that enrollment into Touch ID could potentially be “cumbersome for users in some instances, such as when multiple fingerprints, users and/or devices are used.” By synchronizing the process using a cloud based function, it would help to eliminate the need to re-register a device owner’s fingerprints on every device, in addition to the fingerprints of all of the other people who are to be given permission to access the iOS gadget.

At the time of the writing of this article, the Touch ID security page at Apple explained that “iOS and other apps never access your fingerprint data, it’s never stored on Apple servers, and it’s never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else.”

If that mobile security policy is to remain the same, it makes one wonder how this potential cloud synchronization technology could possible work, and how it could be safely applied in order to protect the data from the Touch ID feature.