IF you’re concerned about being watched by the UK’s four million-plus CCTV cameras, then how do you feel about the latest Big Brother development: having your movements tracked while shopping in Exeter’s Princesshay centre?

Many are unsettled by news that Princesshay uses a system called Footpath, which tracks shoppers’ movements via signals from their mobile phones.

The centre’s managers says the system does not record any personal information and is effectively like watching dots on a screen.

They say the information gathered is simply used to improve the running of Princesshay, by showing where more staff are needed, for example.

But shoppers who spoke to reporters from national papers which ran the story, or who added internet comments to those stories, mostly stated their unhappiness at being tracked.

Some resented the fact that the only way to avoid having your movements tracked is by switching off your phone.

The other alarming thing is that Princesshay has apparently been tracking our movements since 2008, yet none of us appear to have noticed.

The management points out several small yellow signs on walls at Princesshay, which state, under a picture of a mobile phone: “To improve our customer service we monitor the movement of mobile phones to help show us how the centre is used by its customers. No personal data is recorded at any time.”

It’s hard to decide whether the worst thing is that these yellow signs are so small, or that we’re all so unobservant we missed them.

I really dislike the idea that my movements are tracked. But that doesn’t mean I subscribe to conspiracy theories, so I do believe the assurances by the Princesshay management and the UK technology company behind Footpath, Path Intelligence, that no personal details are accessed.

But I also wonder how long that will be true? How long will it be before the pressure of profit proves too great for shopping centres like Princesshay to resist the lure of identifying which shops a shopper enters, then targeting that shopper with bespoke advertising.

Facial recognition technology is already used by Facebook, where uploaded photos are run through a system which recognises a face once it has been tagged with a name. You wouldn’t even need to be a Facebook user, just having your photo taken by one who then tagged it with a name would be enough.

Last year a German local authority took action against Facebook over this development, pointing out the dangers if the data were to get into the wrong hands. Undemocratic governments, security services or criminals worldwide would need to do no more than take a photo of someone in the street to identify them: everyone would lose their right to anonymity.

Add facial recognition software to CCTVs and shopping centres like Princesshay would have another tool to know who is buying what and who is where.