This is after forcing login to a store account:
At least they don’t hide in their ToS that:
“l agree to let Walmart monitor my use of Walmart WiFi, including to:
- Determine my presence in Walmart stores
- Associate information about me with my Walmart account
- Improve products and services
- Gather market insights about my in-store purchases and activities”
But that’s not enough, they need to monitor your internet activity further too.
For further reading, some greatest hits (the section headers on Wiki’s Criticism of Walmart):
- Local communities
- Allegations of predatory pricing and supplier issues
- Labor relations
- Poorly run and understaffed stores
- No AEDs in stores (automated external defibrillators)
- Imports and globalization
- Product selection
- Taxes
- Animal welfare
- Midtown Walmart
- Opioids settlement
Nah. Their network their rules. Quit your bitching or use 5g.
privacy sacrifice to use internet in their cavernous dead zone of a building
It was a worthwhile sacrifice, but I’m definitely gonna name & shame! Wouldn’t touch WiFi if it weren’t a dead zone.
Also gave me a chance to complain about some of their other business practices. (Certainly wouldn’t have shopped there if I hadn’t been asked to this one time.)
I’ve never seen this message before so they seem an outlier even in the greedy corporate world. Enough complaints and every once in a while a business changes their practices. Why not whine a little? 🙂
Every public WiFi is like this. iCloud relay doesn’t work on any airport or airplane WiFi. I need to always turn it off and other ‘hide IP’ settings. I have a Target with a dead zone and I’m sure T&C are the same. I just use it when I need it and don’t auto-connect. Walmart needs precise location to pick up from the app. Sam’s club app needs precise location for checkout form the app. Mcd app needs my precise location to give me deals. I wouldn’t say this is asshole design. Our regulation let them design it this way. I turn off my NextDNS and iCloud relay when I’m having issues and then turn back on. Nothing else you can do about it, apart from not using the WiFi or app, unfortunately.
The privacy community and yourself have become the equivalent of windows UAC. It’s tiresome and no sane person with an understanding of technology would ever have the expectation of privacy on a public WiFi network. There are legal and compliance obligations.
Dude, I understand technolgy enough to know that when I use the HTTPS protocol, I have privacy on my packets.
You keep trying to associate the expectation of privacy with a lack of technical knowledge, but I have technical knowledge and you’re wrong.
It’s the legal and compliance part the downvotes don’t understand.
As a business, I would never operate an open-to-the-public network. The liability is too great.
complaining about a lack of privacy on a public wifi node is like complaining that people are perverts for looking at your genitals when you run down the street naked.
Not entirely sure if this is possible but I’m increasingly suspicious that they started jamming outside networks within their warehouse. Of course it makes sense that mobile data doesn’t really work inside a giant steel warehouse, so perhaps it’s just confirmation bias, but I can’t seem to recall not having any mobile data signal at all until my last walmart visit.
I used to keep to myself and look up the location of the item I was looking for online. If they want me to bother a floor person for it though, doing that is highly preferable to giving walmart my email to sell along with any information they can extrapolate from my usage of their network.
Jamming is incredibly illegal so I doubt that. They probably just have a bad roof for reception.
Also remember hanlon’s razor.
Excuse me for not knowing the precise legal landscape involved in covertly blocking the use of outside networks inside of a private warehouse department store
Lol why is this an opinion? If people want to vpn out of my network I don’t give a fuuuuuuuuck. Now if you’re raw doggin’ that traffic or sucking down the bandwidth don’t bitch when I filter or throttle, for sure, but surely you can at least empathize with people wanting to use privacy tools, ya tool.
Our society has so much choice in it. So many options, such as not using the internet at walmart, not going to walmart, etc.
Would you say the same thing if they intercepted HTTPS connections? Or blocked popular DNS (edit: DNS over HTTPS/TLS) resolvers and required you to use the one advertised in DHCP?
I think if you’re going to provide WiFi, just do it and stop spying on me.
The reason they want this is probably so they can tie your Walmart account to your position inside the store. And see which other sites you visit to find a better price, etc.
Yes. Their public network. I have no expectations of any privacy on a public network. This is privacy 101.
You’re conflating the individual practice of having a pessimistic threat model with a corporation’s entitlement to behave badly.
Of course I assume the worst from Walmart or any other public network — I just think they should have some class and provide a public good to their customers without creepy privacy invasion. Somehow they manage to provide free water in fountains without requiring me to scan my driver’s license.
If they published a white paper explaining the Differential Privacy properties of their customer analysis tech, I might revise my opinion.
Exactly. “Hey, we’re gonna let you use our network. But if you do anything illegal or shady on our network, we’d be held liable. So we’re gonna track what you do on our network to make sure if you do try something, we can remove you from the network and have proof.”
I mean, yeah, they’re also gonna collect advertising data, but do you really expect to have an expectation of privacy when using someone else’s network? Just like they can film you in the building, they can monitor your network traffic on their network.
If this surprises you, maybe you should do some more research on how a network actually works. And get a VPN. And maybe don’t connect to random public networks(you don’t even want to know what OTHER PEOPLE can do to you on those networks, nevermind the company).
Also, you pay for your cellphone service, right? Are you paying for the wifi in the store? Nooooooo. They’re giving it to you for free. Almost like they’re offering you something in return for that data monitoring. Like they’re offering you a service with a built in method to recoup costs… A service you voluntarily use and in doing so, agree to their terms.
Or you, you know, don’t use it.
but do you really expect to have an expectation of privacy when using someone else’s network
That is kind of the concept behind the internet. A bunch of networks passing packets along, using the same protocol, not asking questions about their content.
Fifteen years ago we had a whole battle and everyone other than the evils at the top were against deep packet inspection. This new generation is a bunch of bootlickers.
Do you miss the part where you’re not paying to use that network and it’s offered as a free service? I’m old too dumbass. I remember before wifi even existed. Do you also go to Walmart and expect to be able to charge your batteries for free off their power? Or use their phones for free?
You’re confusing free as in beer and free as in speech. No one is forcing you to use their FREE service. Use your own cellular network jackass. The network that you DO pay to use.
What’s next, going to someones house and demanding their Wi-Fi password because “the Internet is free man!”
The issue being it seems they block VPNs based on the screenshot. At least that’s what I am thinking this iCloud thing is
Which is still their right, with it being their network. The cost of using their bandwidth is letting them watch what you do with it. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
Also, you pay for your cellphone service, right? Are you paying for the wifi in the store? Nooooooo.
Yes? Indirectly its baked into the cost of service.
While I get the sentiment, I can’t help but picture the complaining customer “I PAY your wages” from that statement.
What service? It’s baked into the cost of collecting data. That’s literally the exact reason they give it to you FOR FREE.
You really need to learn the difference between free speech and free beer. You’re asking for free beer.
LOL, “your communication cannot go through our service that we can monitor, so somebody else might be spying on you, black is white, war is peace, freedom is slavery”
Start giving their store one star reviews and mention this
Please just don’t use public WiFi and if you do, assume that your privacy and security are at risk.
Or use a vpn if you really must. I’ve noticed that most Walmarts have really bad cellular connectivity and this is probably the reason why
I noticed that also. I would never connect to Walmart’s wifi unless it was some kind of communication emergency.
So I just don’t use my phone in Walmart and that’s fine. Human beings don’t require a data feed to survive.
Human beings don’t require a data feed to survive.
The hell I don’t. I am NOT putting up with reality for that long, ESPECIALLY in a Walmart.
Instead of offering WiFi why don’t they just set up LTE/5G in store? I once complained to my carrier about terrible reception and they sent me a magic box that takes cellular data, puts it in a VPN tunnel back to the carrier and goes on from there.
I thought these things were pretty normal, or am I missing something?
The problem is that you don’t get LTE/5G reception in the store from your phone, so why would a box that does the same thing solve the problem?
I don’t understand why you would need wifi in a supermarket. What are you doing while shopping that mobile data can’t handle?
Large warehouse type buildings make getting a signal difficult ESPECIALLY in a walmart. I prefer using the app to find items I wouldn’t otherwise know where to look.
I use it to pull up a recipe that I’m cooking, If I need to double check a detail. Usually, I have everything on a physical list for practicality.
The issue is large warehouses, like Walmart or Costco or whatever often have bad cell reception, so you might need wifi to reach the internet.
