By Ron Benvenisti. Imagine you’re sitting at work and just before lunchtime you get a text or email offering you a 10% discount at a local eatery just down the road or around the block. Well, according to Chinese computer scientist, Yong Wang, along with Northwestern University say it’s on the way. In other words, they’re saying advertisers could soon start stalking you, finding out where you are by looking at your phone or Internet connection and pin you down within a few hundred feet. Really?
 
Using a rather convoluted method, which takes three stages of junk-math, they claim they can drill-down to the location of a “target” computer or phone. This questionable method uses the time it takes to send a data packet (a little piece of network information) to your computer and converts it into a distance by measuring the time it takes to get there. Then they send it to a Google Maps server and compare the time difference to “locate” your whereabouts. He says the method could be useful in certain situations, however, such as targeting hungry office workers with vouchers for nearby takeaway food outlets.
 
No worries folks. This ridiculous methodology fails to take into account, network traffic, satellite distances, huge ISP hubs (which show thousands of single users as one location) and I could go on and on.  The inaccuracy of such a system, if used, for example, by the air force, would put a nuclear missile off course by what could be hundreds if not thousands of miles!!!
 
Nevertheless, Wang says, “the method could be useful such as targeting hungry office workers with vouchers for “nearby” takeaway food outlets”.
 
I suppose in their zeal to try anything to lure customers at any cost, techno-challenged advertisers will apparently fund any scheme to “net” customers and the universities will gladly take their checks.  Be ready to get a text message while enjoying your Chol Hamoed Pesach from a treif restaurant in Australia.