How shopping centres could be tracking your every move

This is not new it has been going on for many years, yes it is intrusive and unethical but it is the way of the world. Companies have increased their sales by as much as 20% using the information gathered, for example they can do things like ID the country the person is from, where people gather most, which goods are picked up and looked at (linked to RFIDs attached to the items), which parts of the shopping center are most used (which allows stores to locate in those areas) etc etc. Some countries have signs in Shopping centers which make you aware you are being tracked and can switch off your phones – which is usually impractical. Add this all to the cameras and you have everything apart from the underware you have on being recorded about you !!

I am amazed that me and the missus are able to wander round shopping centres, gardens, villages, cities quite separately without ever having to turn on our mobiles. Do we have abnormal powers or is it just a simple matter of agreeing intent, budget and boundaries?
Surely this tracking technology is already widely used in motoring. How else would the sign on the M3 at Winchester know that it will take me 35 minutes to reach the M4 at Newbury. Similarly I can plan a journey using the traffic flow function on an Ipad Maps app. or the web based Tom Tom route planner taking account of the traffic and delays. This was really useful last winter when snow was closing some roads, and I could see traffic snarling up or clearing almost live. And I recently noticed in Shanghai that motorway junction signs were beautifully showing live information on traffic flow leaving the motorway using red, amber or green branches. Surely that’s all from tracking mobile signals and very beneficial to the individual and the economy.
Inside private space the customer probably should have a choice, ie. notification and they are almost certainly being tracked by cameras anyway. As long as it’s truely anonymised and not continued outside the store it should probably be OK … but then Google street maps should have been OK but they were additionally collecting undisclosed wifi security data, or that’s as much we know so far. It’s what isn’t disclosed, because some of these firms appear to have no understanding of legitimate boundaries, that really bothers me.

I don’t like the idea of being tracked, however as one comment rightly pointed out, shopping malls are private property and we choose to use them.

However, I don’t own a mobile telephone, never have, never will, so it’s no big deal to me. Likewise I kind of like the idea that everyone might wish to turn their mobile telephones off, as I am a little tired of dodging out of the way of people not looking where they are going all of the time.

From another thread, but relevant here.

George Orwells book 1984 envisaged hidden cameras in TV sets.
Even he didn’t think we could actually be conditioned to buy cameras install them ourselves, then leave them connected 24/7, and pay to do so.

We have the nightmare scenario of being microchipped when born, so a big brother state will be able to control us by monitoring our every move.

Why bother when we will buy the chips ourselves, carry them everywhere 24/7, store loads of intimate and personal data on them and pay to do so.

Smartphone techs only purpose is to track the dummies that use them.

Reguarding shop spy. Sainsburys sent me Nectar vouchers for certain goods that i had bought a few weeks before. At the time i thought it was very strange how they knew what i had actually bought .Didnt think about the fact that they were spying now i am very wary about it