A routine trip to Walmart turned into a privacy nightmare for one shopper.
What the retail giant knew about his movements left him stunned.
And a Walmart customer revealed one creepy way the company is tracking your every move.
Walmart sent an email that should terrify every American
Attorney John Graham wasn't expecting much when he checked his email one day.
But what he found made his blood run cold.
Walmart had sent him a message asking if he'd been at one of their locations two days earlier.¹
The catch? Graham never made a purchase. Never signed into anything. Never even scanned a rewards card.
"I didn't buy anything, and I didn't sign in anywhere," Graham explained in a viral TikTok video that's been viewed over 1.1 million times. "So how the hell does Walmart know where I was?"¹
Graham admits he might have visited that exact store — he was making warm apple cider for his sick family and checked if Walmart had the ingredients. When they didn't, he walked out empty-handed.
Walmart still knew he was there.
This isn't some isolated glitch or coincidence. Walmart has spent years building a surveillance network inside its stores that would make the NSA jealous. And they're doing it all perfectly legally.
The technology tracking you without permission
Walmart's own documentation reveals the disturbing truth about how they monitor customers.²
When your phone's Wi-Fi is turned on, Walmart's systems can record your device's location as you move through the store. Your phone constantly announces its presence through a Media Access Control (MAC) address — basically a unique fingerprint for your device.
Walmart captures this signal and maps your entire path through the store, even if you never connect to their network or open an app.
"We want to understand how the average customer shops," Walmart claims in their Store Pilot Test Project documentation.²
Translation: they want to know which aisles you browse, how long you linger in each section, and what products you consider before deciding not to buy.
But Wi-Fi tracking is just the beginning.
According to patents Walmart has filed, the retail giant is developing systems that could track shoppers through Bluetooth beacons, facial recognition cameras, and even invisible substances coating store floors.³
One patent describes coating floors with compounds that rub off onto shopping cart wheels. Cameras at checkout then photograph your cart wheels and reconstruct your entire path through the store — mapping every aisle you visited and every product you passed.³
The technology gets even creepier. Walmart's patents describe using audio beacons that emit ultrasonic signals outside the range of human hearing. Your phone's microphone picks up these signals and apps can use them to track your exact location inside the store.
Americans are fed up with corporate surveillance
The surveillance isn't just happening at Walmart.
A Federal Trade Commission survey found that 8 out of 10 shoppers don't want stores tracking their movements through their smartphones.⁴
Nearly half said they're less likely to shop at a retailer if the brand implements a tracking program.⁴
But that hasn't stopped the retail industry from going all-in on location tracking technology.
Target, CVS, and other major chains use similar systems. The retail sector analyzes 200 billion rows of transactional data every few weeks, cross-referencing it with weather reports, social media trends, gas prices, and local events.³
Data brokers can legally buy and sell your location information without your knowledge or consent.
Government agencies including ICE, the FBI, and the DEA have all purchased access to commercial location tracking databases that aggregate data from 80,000 different apps.
Your movements through a store reveal more than just shopping habits. Location data can expose where you live, where you work, which doctors you visit, and even which political events you attend.
In 2024, privacy concerns about retail tracking hit an all-time high. Consumer surveys found that 43% of shoppers cite "potential security concerns" as their top frustration with retailer apps and websites.⁵
Research shows 26% of consumers have abandoned brands due to privacy concerns, and 29% have stopped shopping at retailers demanding excessive personal information.⁶
Trust in corporate America's handling of personal data has collapsed. Only 8% of consumers feel comfortable sharing personal details with online vendors in 2024, down from 20% in 2022.⁶
How to fight back against corporate surveillance
Graham's experience prompted him to immediately turn off location services on his phone.¹
That's a good first step, but it won't stop Wi-Fi tracking unless you completely disable Wi-Fi when entering stores.
The more fundamental problem is that current privacy laws lag decades behind the technology corporations are deploying.
Walmart's tracking systems are perfectly legal under existing regulations. The company claims they anonymize the data and don't collect personally identifiable information.²
But security experts know that's cold comfort. Anonymized location data can easily be de-anonymized by cross-referencing it with other data sources.
Graham summed up the problem perfectly when he asked his followers: "How does Walmart know where I was two days ago?"¹
The answer should concern every American who values privacy. Retail giants like Walmart have built a surveillance state inside their stores, and they're using it to track millions of customers without meaningful consent.
Walmart and the retail industry have decided your privacy doesn't matter. The only question is whether Americans will accept that or demand lawmakers finally rein in corporate surveillance.
¹ Stacy Fernandez, "'I Didn't Buy Anything And I Didn't Sign In Anywhere': South Carolina Man Gets Email From Walmart," BroBible, November 3, 2025.
² Walmart, "Store Pilot Test Project – Mobile Device Location Tracking," Walmart Corporate, accessed November 2025.
³ Joe Fassler, "Walmart's new patents will allow it to track you in its stores—with or without your consent," The Counter, January 14, 2020.
⁴ Ashkan Soltani, "Privacy trade-offs in retail tracking," Federal Trade Commission, March 26, 2021.
⁵ Business Wire, "CI&T's 2025 Connected Retail Report: Price Sensitivity, Privacy Concerns, and the Future of Retail," March 6, 2025.
⁶ Krzysztof Gołdziewski, "7 Retail Data Privacy Mistakes That Cost Stores Millions in 2025," Netguru, May 21, 2025.
