How to stop Eddystone pushing content to phones without my app

Question

I am looking to develop an app that works with Eddystone beacons as part of a local arts festival. It seems that the beacons can push content to Chrome whether the owner of the phone would like to receive the content or not, and that Google has designed 'Ephemeral Identifiers' (EIDs) that can make sure content is only pushed to a content specific app. Is this true? How do I make sure I don't bother people with no interest in my content from being disturbed by unwanted notifications? Is this different in android and ios?

Answer 1

Chrome for Android has been updated to natively display content from Eddystone-URL beacon transmissions.  This is a special beacon format that has a compressed web URL in the transmission itself. 

If a user with the latest Android Chrome browser comes across such a beacon, the phone will send a notification to the user saying that such content is available.  Tapping on the notification will reveal the web page's title (which Google's servers scrape from the URL.) If the user taps on that, the web page is displayed.

It is important to note that users must opt-in to this behavior by (1) granting Chrome location access, (2) accepting display of Eddystone-URL messaging the first time one is detected.

If you only want your app to respond to your beacons, and do not want Android Chrome to respond as described above, then it is easy for the beacon owner to opt-out by either of the following:

• Don't use the Eddystone-URL format, instead using Eddystone-UID (which sends a simple unchanging unique numeric identifier).

• Use Eddystone-URL but transmit a URL that does not point to a resolvable web page.  If Google's servers cannot crawl the page, Chrome will ignore it.

The Eddystone-EID format is a yet to be released encrypted beacon scheme that is expected to be similar to Eddystone-UID, but with an identifier that changes over time to keep others from spoofing it or using it for unauthorized purposes. 

It is not needed to use Eddystone-EID to stop Chrome from pushing content to your users -- you can simply use either of the two techniques described above.  Eddystone-EID is useful for preventing other third parties from using your beacons in unauthorized ways.