London’s smart trash cans can track people's mobiles

London's recycling bins have gone smart enough to track people through their smartphones and other devices over Wi-Fi.

According to a report by Quartz, 12 recycling bins in London have been revealed to have the ability to track unsuspecting passers-by through their smartphones or other devices.

Renew, which tested the bins this summer said, over a million unique devices were picked up just in the first month.

The bins can pick up nearby smartphones or other devices' MAC addresses, which are unique identification numbers, but while the number is unique a person's name or address is not known with it.

According to CEO of Renew, Kaveh Memari, who spoke to Quartz, from their point of view, it was open to everybody, and any one could buy the data gathered by the ubiquitous trash cans.

Memari added, London was "the most heavily surveillanced city in the world and as long they did not add a name and home address, it was  legal".

These bins could be avoided as they would only track people if they had Wi-Fi turned on their device(s), which, according to Memari was the case with 80 per cent of people in London since they left their Wi-Fi on when leaving their home / office.

Memari's aim for the tracking devices would be to sell to places such as bars for helping them determine the habits of visitors.

The company initially installed digital screens to 100 recycling bins across London last year for the sole purpose of displaying adverts.

However, given that the technology was still in its infancy there still remained unanswered questions over the legality of the scheme.

The bins were first installed by the start up which makes them and sells them, in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. Currently there are 200 units spread across the City of London equipped with wi-fi and LCD screens. Time on the screens is sold to advertisers with local councils and charities receiving ''up to a third'' of the screentime.

With each unit costing £30,000 to build and install and costing around half a million in maintenance costs over Renew's 21-year contract, the investment in bins was not a small one. However, the quality of the advertising space more than made up for the costs, according to commentators.

According to commentators, the scope for new advertising methods offered by the data was remarkable. For instance, if a coffee company knew that the iPhone with a particular MAC address, usually stopped in around 8 in the morning for a coffee and a croissant was now headed for a morning pick-me-up, then it might be worth the advertising cost to flash a message  on a relevant bin just as the customer was approaching, to remind him of a loyalty scheme or a special offer.