Shoppers will get geo-tagged

YOU ARE THE TARGET for shop owners who will know what you recently purchased and your proximity to their store with the help of a geo-location data service being offered to businesses.

Geo-tagging has become a dirty word since Google used it to justify snuffling data from unencrypted WiFi networks. Now it's about to get creepier with a company called Optier that has lept onto the geo-tagging bandwagon.

"A scenario might be mobile geolocation information being used to target shoppers that have a weakness for handbags with targeted discount offers as they approach a branch of their favourite department store," said Motti Tal, co-founder of Optier.

It's not quite Minority Report retina scan personalised advertising, but it's getting there. Mobile geo-tagging is just the next step in targeted advertising and shoppers already have every sense assaulted by various media.

Optier has created what it calls the Complex Event Processing engine that is designed to harness business intelligence. It can monitor real-time and real-world business transactions on the fly. It nails down data from business transactions, activities, third-party information and something called "customer experience" and uses that information to report back continuously.

We surely aren't technophobes but deploying millions of pounds in technology just so our mums can make more informed decisions when shopping on the high street strikes us as a bit too much. µ