Author: Julie Campbell

A new report has suggested that shoppers are ready to start to receive notifications based on where they are.

According to a report that has been issued by an in store provider of a mobile marketing platform, Swirl Networks, consumers are becoming increasingly willing to receive location based marketing alerts that are triggered by beacon signals when they enter a shop or other similar places.

This is a trend that has been interesting many tech and advertising giants and was discussed by the MMW earlier this month.

Major technology companies, such as Apple, are now turning their sights toward location based marketing alerts and everything that surrounds them. For example, that company recently launched its iBeacon tech, which gives merchants to provide shoppers with in store messages that draw attention to sales, deals, promotions, and other information that the consumer may find relevant.

One concern some companies have had is whether consumers are ready for location based marketing alerts.

According to the research outlined in the Swirl Networks report, consumers are ready and willing to start to obtain messages through their smartphones from a store when they have entered its doors. In fact, the study revealed that a considerable 77 percent of shoppers would be willing to share their data regarding the location of their smartphone (which is the central technology for campaigns triggered by beacons) as long as the value that they receive in return is deemed adequate.

The Swirl Networks study also showed that shoppers also have a greater likelihood of sharing their location data with their favorite retailers (as was the case among 65 percent of the research participants) than they would to Google, Facebook, or shopping or daily deal apps.

According to the report, “As retailers ramp up their use of beacons for in-store mobile marketing, they must overcome the two largest complaints from consumers about today’s mobile shopping alerts: lack of relevance (41 percent) and lack of value (37 percent).” This is important insight for retailers that hope to be able to encourage broad use of their location based mobile marketing alerts without turning off smartphone using customers.

One of the privacy control features that had previously been available on smartphones has been removed.

It has just been revealed that Google Inc. has decided to eliminate an experimental Android mobile security feature meant to help users to be able to boost their privacy levels by blocking apps from being able to collect some forms of their data, such as their location and the contents of their address books.

This change will mean that smartphone users of version 4.4.2 of the operating system will not be able to block that sharing.

In order to be able to use certain apps, users will no longer be able to rely on the Android mobile security blocking to stop their personal data from being collected. According to a Google spokesperson, the feature had accidentally been included in the Android 4.3 version (Jelly Bean) that was released last summer.

Many have expressed suspicion concerning the explanation about the removal of the Android mobile security feature.

While some have accepted Google’s explanation and are not bothered by the removal of the privacy tool, others are suspicious and don’t feel that the elimination of the feature was the best move when improvement would have been a superior path.

The concern that has now been expressed is that users of smartphones based on the operating system can choose not to upgrade to Android 4.4.2, but this could place them at an increased risk of other types of vulnerabilities that were overcome by the upgrade. This will cause people to have to make the choice between two different types of protection for their devices.

Many third party apps for these smartphones require personal information access, such as location data and phone call information, in order to be used, despite the fact that there is not always an obvious reason why the application would require this data in order to function. The added privacy feature gave users the ability to select which types of data could be collected by a third party application.

Now, the Android mobile security feature providing that ability will no longer be available to users who upgrade to the latest version of the operating system.