Frankenstein Lastest In Cell Phone Technology

With our increasing addiction to our mobile phones, have we created a monster that we are less and less able to control? CNN) -- As always, Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile telephone extravaganza, is being held in Barcelona this year. But it really should be held in Geneva, close to where Mary Shelley created Frankenstein.

That's because, with our increasing addiction to our mobile phones, we are in danger of creating a monster that we are less and less able to control.

Exaggeration? When was the last time you went out without your smartphone? How naked, how lost, do you feel without your mobile device? How much essential data, I mean really personal stuff that you wouldn't want anyone else to see, does your mobile phone contain?

Expect all the noise this week in Barcelona to be about more powerful phones from Nokia, HTC, Samsung and LG. These hardware companies will articulate the benefits of their technology in terms of "personal empowerment." But the real truth behind these increasingly intelligent devices is personal disempowerment. Such is the eerie reality of a phone that you can't live without.

Read more: Full coverage of Mobile World Congress

Some of the problems with our cellphones are already well known. Last November, for example, the American epidemiologist and writer Dr Devra Davis told me about her research claiming that our cellphones could be giving us cancer.

Then there was Robert Vamosi, the security expert, who explained to me how our mobile gadgets were spying on us. Vamosi even authored a book last year about this, entitled "How Our Technologies Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies."

Vamosi isn't exaggerating about this dark side. There's an entire ecosystem developing around our mobile devices designed to spy on us. The Wall Street Journal ran a chilling series entitled "What They Know" which revealed how our Apple iPhones and Google Android devices were watching our every move. The surveillance and the mobile phone industries, The Journal indicated, are becoming ever more indistinguishable.

Every day now seems to reveal a new mobile data scandal. Only this week, for example, it was reported that Facebook, Flickr and other app makers were reading our text messages without our permission