Coming to a store near you: 'Do Not Track'

Real-world 'Do Not Track' coming to retail stores

When you're shopping online, often times you're being tracked so that ads relevant to the stores where you shop will pop up on other sites you use. Kind of creepy, right? Well, what if that's also happening to you when you shop in real life?

According to the above article, multiple retail locations have been testing new technology that uses your cell phone to track you as you shop. This technology can tell what aisle you're in, what you're looking at, and even how long you spent looking at certain products.

Senator Charles Schumer is incredibly unsettled by this technology. He is currently working to implement rules that state that stores utilizing this technology must display signs explaining the tracking and offering people the right to opt-out. As it stands now, though, majority of people are not informed of this technology -- and it is in use as we speak.

I do majority of my grocery shopping at Stop and Shop. The store implemented a cool technology that allows consumers to scan their grocery items as they shop, then scan a barcode at the register and have their entire grocery order come up. This eliminates long checkout lines and makes for a faster shopping experience overall. Another part of the technology, though, is it tracks you as you move across the store and sends coupons to the scanner when you're in front of certain products. This seems to be where this tracking technology involving cell phones is heading; but somehow it seems less invasive when the coupons are going to a product directly linked to the store.

Consumer privacy is being seriously violated with this technology. Hopefully the rules go into effect soon, because if not, I'm not going to feel comfortable Christmas shopping this year...