It had to happen eventually: malls are now using your cell phone to track you as you wander. Why? Because they want to be able to more effectively sell you junk you don’t need, that’s why.
The technology, called Footpath and from everybody’s favorite surveillance state Britain, is pretty simple: it triangulates cell phone signals as they move throughout the mall, telling the mall exactly where you’ve been and for how long. Of course, this technology wasn’t designed to identify you — it won’t collect your phone number or intercept your text messages. On its own, there’s absolutely no way to figure out who you are.
Which is a relief, because it’s not like stores use surveillance cameras with facial recognition software to identify previous customers or that many shoppers use a piece of plastic to buy their goods that would immediately reveal who they are if you used a simple program to cross-reference purchases and location data! Whew! We nearly had a major privacy issue there!