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Notes -
The office where I work has installed new a new Bluetooth access system, and it's sufficiently annoying to make me reevaluate The Industrial Society and Its Future.
Before, you had a little NFC tag you'd beep at the door, and it opened pretty much instantly. Now I have to:
Thanks for this, as its related to my work. Using bluetooth apps for Electronic Access Control raises some interesting usability challenges. Like why would you want to have bluetooth open on your phone all the time. Also the app can probably track your location through the facility, which while it can have some great functionality in theory like aiding fire evacuation (even though in practice no fire warden will bother opening the app in a real scenario), its more likely to be used to monitor your work in the same way keyloggers do for company laptops.
Can you request a separate access control swipe card?
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I wouldn't be surprised if the "door app" collects behavioural data that the operator can sell as a side gig, enabling them to undercut the previous NFC-based system when offering the system to your office. (They might also figure this makes it easier to issue and revoke access than if they had to issue/collect physical tokens.)
The behavioural data can be used in some ways in intelligent buildings for legitimate purposes (like telling app users that the company gym is at capacity so you don't bother grabbing your gym bag), but the data will absolutely be used to make profit for the provider at some point.
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Wouldn't token-based authentication give each token a unique code whose access can be revoked in the event that the token is lost or stolen?
I managed my small company's NFC door system and yes: we had a database with every employee next to their NFC tag ID and we could revoke them without confiscating the key. Pretty sure that's standard on every system you'd buy. Probably if you're homebrewing a solution, too.
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