New ways to track you via your mobile devices: Big Brother or good business?

Privacy fans, take note: A new technology, called Indoor Positioning System, could push your worry meter to the max.

IPS allows pinpoint tracking of any Wi-Fi-enabled device, such as a smartphone or tablet, within a building. This means that an IPS service could easily track you -- right down to, say, the table you're occupying in a mall's food court -- as long as your mobile devices' Wi-Fi is turned on. And, if you're a typical device user, your Wi-Fi is always on, right? In short, we've moved far beyond using regular old GPS for location tracking. Indoor environments are challenging for low-cost location systems such as GPS, because the ways in which buildings are constructed -- not to mention physical obstacles and even people's bodies -- interfere with GPS's ability to pinpoint a location.