The end of privacy?

Forget Street View, there is a far more subtle - and pervasive - invasion of your private life being carried out - this time through your mobile phone

When the furore about Google Street View washed across the UK last month, Google must have been pleased. For a much more sinister invasion of privacy had gone unnoticed. A week before, Google had, without any fanfare, released 11 software applications for mobile phones that spell a fundamental change in our lives.

Among the applications were functions such as text messaging, web browsing, a diary, Orkut - the company's social networking offering - and a program for Google Maps. Innocent enough, perhaps. But combined they would allow Google to know what you are doing all of the time. A truly Orwellian development that has been described by privacy campaigners as "a catastrophic corruption of consent".

Far-fetched? Not at all.

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