Imagine walking into a store and being greeted by a computer that reads the chip in your shirt and tries to sell you matching pants!

As technology expands, the innovative new products and services on the horizon will mean that untold amounts of our private information could become public.

As social-networking sites become a daily diary and blogs like this one grow more popular, we’re starting to see a new phenomenon called “Little Brother surveillance.” It happens when friends and co-workers casually post or repost information from your sites that you might not intend for a mass audience to see.

Add to this the spread of tracking tools like GPS and you’ve got another privacy challange as our whereabouts become instantly knowable. Users could potentially broadcast their location around the clock — inadvertently letting observers know they went to the doctor’s office or snuck out of work early to hit the casino!

Another way our individual privacy can be compromised is by mobile advertising. We’re already accustomed to receiving targeted ads based on the Web sites we browse, but mobile ads targeted to your physical location could be more invasive. Consumers could face a steady stream of unwanted ads leveraging intimate details such as where they live or shop.

So which camp are you in? Are you one who sees potential privacy losses as an acceptable trade-off for using cool and useful new technologies? Or, are you concerned that your privacy is eroding? I have a feeling that many are in the second category, which could lead to new laws that limit how companies can use information about their customers. The bottom line is that these trends will make it more difficult to move about the world anonymously.