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Nordstrom No Longer Tracking Customer Phones

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – Nordstrom is no longer collecting information from the smart phones of its customers.

Earlier this week, CBS 11 told you about the technology being used at 17 Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores across the country, including the NorthPark store in Dallas.

Since September, sensors staged throughout the stores were able to track signals from smart phones as they attempted to connect to Wi-Fi service.   The company said it was using the data to measure foot traffic within different departments of its stores at different times of the day.

Nordstrom spokesperson Tara Darrow confirmed the company stopped using sensors the day after CBS 11 aired a story about the practice.  After the story, customers contacted the company to ask questions and share feedback, according to Darrow.

"We'd been testing Euclid since September and have said all along this was a test for us. We had been discussing what made sense in terms of concluding the test; after 8 months we'd felt like we had learned a lot and determined that it was the right time to end it," said Darrow in an email.

Nordstrom maintained the sensors never picked up any personal information from customers, but shoppers seemed unhappy with the revelation that their phones were being used to gather collect any data without their permission.

On the CBSDFW.com Facebook page, some shoppers said they would no longer patronize Nordstrom stores.  "They've lost me with this. They can track my purchases while Im in the store but dont track me or my phone," wrote David Lautz.

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