The consumer advocate said when a shopper enters a store they were often monitored by Bluetooth and wif-fi tracking. Sophisticated facial recognition technology was also being used and Choice’s Kate Bower said people were often completely unaware.

Beacons, wayfinding, electronic pricing and streamlined checkout were a few of the retail tech trends that were already in use or on the way.

A beacon was a device that emitted a Bluetooth signal that tracked a customer. If Bluetooth was enabled on a shopper’s phone the beacon connected with it and tracked them through the store and could trigger a notification of an in-app message.

A beacon detects when you’re near the cereal aisle, and the store knows what your favourite cereal is, based on your purchasing history. So, you receive an alert on your phone that there’s a discount today on that cereal, and the app indicates which shelf it’s on.

Wi-fi tracking was also being used by large shopping centres to monitor foot traffic in property which was then used as the basis for assessing rents for retailers.

Choice said the next step from targeting a shopper with special messages was offering deals based on who you are and algorithms were being used to understand how much a person spent to secure a discount.

“However, as tracking technologies and data collection ramp up, so will the ability to create highly personalised marketing. That includes different prices for different people (personalised pricing) as well as dynamic pricing,” Choice said.

“Some digital billboards, for example, have a hidden camera embedded within them. The camera looks at your face, then an algorithm estimates your age, gender and a few other characteristics before displaying an advertisement ‘suited’ for you,” Bower said.

“While loyalty programs may seem beneficial to consumers, these programs actually create something of a data goldmine and enable retailers to collect valuable and highly specific data about their customers.”

An already-widely used technology was radio frequency and mapping inventory tags, which uses microchips imbedded in tags. This allows retailers to see how much stock they had and whether it was gaining customer attention.

“Choice has significant concerns about the highly personalised data this kind of technology is collecting, how it’s being used and the lack of regulation surrounding it,” Bower said.

“These new retail technologies clearly illustrate the urgent need for privacy law reform to protect people’s personalised data.

“When the Privacy Act was developed in the 1980s many of these tracking technologies didn’t exist, meaning much of the law is outdated.