I was just at a Microsoft store this morning and I did not find the above experience to be true at all. In fact when I stopped by the Apple store the staff was much more intrusive.
Only if they use electronic methods such as jammers. As far as I can tell there is no law against making a building a large faraday cage isn't prohibited.
I am seeing the samething on Chrome 15 and Windows XP. I wonder if there is some issue with the font rendering engine on XP. Additionally, if you zoom in 3 or 4 times on the page the font suddenly clears up.
I take it you've never used the Google Voice application for Android/iPhone? On my android phone the text message issues you've mention disappear as there are no forwarding numbers and every message arrives on my phone.
This seems to compete with some of the benefits of using Google Wallet. Although, I suppose a Google Wallet based loyalty card requires a lot larger investment by the business.
Also since a QR code is just an image and not something more complicated like an NFC tag what's to stop someone from taking a picture of it with their phone and scanning it multiple times at home?
edit:* well looking at their FAQ they say this:
Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure.
That still has to trust the smartphone to report the correct
GPS and velocity, additionally I think faking the statistical variation might not be too difficult.
Using a TPM to ensure that only trusted software is accessing the fob as well. We're still a little ways off from a completely cryptographically secure software stack.