EFFICIENT AND SECURE COMMUNICATION USING WIRELESS SERVICE IDENTIFIERS
Systems and methods are provided for reducing communications between servers and a mobile device and providing enhanced security and privacy to wireless beacon services. This can involve a broadcast device transmitting a beacon transmission using a short range wireless radio, such a Bluetooth or WiFi, and including a MAC address, a first unique identifier, and a beacon service identifier. The mobile device then selects one or more unique identifiers from received beacon transmissions, by filtering (that is, selecting) those beacon transmissions which include the beacon service identifier. The wireless device then takes further action, if the first unique identifier is present among the selected one or more unique identifiers, using stored information from the server. The stored information may be delivered to the wireless device in response to the wireless device sending the first unique identifier to a server, or the stored information may have been previously downloaded.
1 . A method comprising:
receiving, by a server, from a first mobile wireless device, a first location reporting message, wherein the first location reporting message comprises information derived from a particular beacon transmission associated with a beacon location service, the particular beacon transmission having been transmitted by a second mobile wireless device and detected by the first mobile wireless device, wherein the first location reporting message includes:
i) a unique identifier of the particular beacon transmission or information derived from the unique identifier of the particular beacon transmission, and
ii) a location of the first mobile wireless device associated with the detection of the particular beacon transmission by the first mobile wireless device;
sending, by the server, a message so as to enable an entity associated with the second mobile wireless device to be informed of the location associated with the detection of the particular beacon transmission by the first mobile wireless device;
wherein the detection of the particular beacon transmission by the first mobile wireless device associated with the beacon location service includes the particular beacon transmission having been received by the first mobile wireless device utilizing a Bluetooth wireless protocol and transmitted by the second mobile wireless device, wherein the particular beacon transmission was unsolicited and includes (a) a MAC address, (b) a unique identifier wherein the unique identifier of the particular beacon transmission is a numeric value which does not directly identify a location at which the particular beacon transmission occurred, and (c) a beacon service identifier identifying a service not accessible via the Bluetooth wireless protocol, and wherein the beacon service identifier of the particular beacon transmission had the value of the beacon service identifier equal to a particular beacon service identifier identifying the beacon location service; and,
wherein the particular beacon service identifier identifies the beacon location service in which a detecting device:
a) filters beacon transmissions which were received having the particular beacon service identifier;
b) sends at least one location reporting message to the server associated with the beacon location service utilizing a cellular communications protocol or wireless local area communications protocol, based upon at least one of the filtered beacon transmissions, in which the at least one location reporting message comprises:
i) a unique identifier of the at least one filtered beacon transmission or information derived from the unique identifier of the at least one filtered beacon transmission, and
ii) a location of a detecting mobile wireless device associated with the detection of the at least one filtered beacon transmission by the detecting mobile wireless device, and
wherein both the MAC address and the unique identifier values for beacon transmissions having the particular beacon service identifier value from a particular transmitting device change values over time, while the particular beacon service identifier value remains the same.