Black Friday 2013 – The Numbers Are In

Posted on December 9, 2013

Devicescape’s stats are in for the Black Friday and Thanksgiving week, and once again our users benefitted from high performance Wi-Fi connections in many top retail establishments while shopping for bargains. The numbers show big increases in Black Friday foot traffic at many U.S. merchants compared to normal levels. First, a quick note about the numbers: We collect all our statistics based on UTC times, so 11/29/13 in the charts (except where noted otherwise) is really 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m. PST on Thanksgiving Day through to the same time on Black Friday. That handily groups all the traffic from the stores that started their sales events on the Thursday evening, too, but it means that the late afternoon/evening of Black Friday is rolled into Saturday’s numbers. Target Target started their sale at 8 p.m. on Thursday night, and the stores near us were all very busy. The numbers indicate a 2.5X increase in foot traffic for that day. Although, by Sunday, the levels were dropping back down to near normal for weekends, so the Black Friday phenomenon still appears to be just the one-day event and not a whole weekend phenomenon.  Charts for Apple, Macy’s, and Barnes & Noble stores…

The Amenity Wi-Fi Owner’s Dilemma: Ease of Use Versus Compliance

Posted on December 3, 2013

Two common themes about publicly available Wi-Fi circulate constantly in the press:  security (for users), and abuse (by users).  I find these issues fascinating because they position users at opposite ends of the spectrum. There’s the hapless user whose secrets are being stolen, and there’s the terrorist/ identity thief whose using free (and supposedly anonymous) network access for their own nefarious aims. Let’s take a moment to examine these topics. Security is not to be taken lightly, but in our view security of public Wi-FI has been over-dramatized as the problem. The argument goes that public Wi-Fi is insecure because of the “open” (read unecrypted) nature of the link from your phone, PC, or tablet to the W-iFi access point in the bar, hotel, or café.  The weak part of the debate is the fact that even if the link itself was “secure”  (read encrypted), then beyond the Wi-Fi access point and all through the Internet your traffic would be unencrypted and fully exposed! That has absolutely nothing to do with public Wi-Fi being open or secure. To resolve this, users need end-to-end encryption, from their device right the way through to the receiving service (i.e. their bank). In fact,…