After reading the article, it is the mark.
"According to a report drawn up by a team of academics for (then) Britain’s Information Commissioner Richard Thomas in 2006, within the next couple of years our almost every movement, purchase and communication could be monitored by a complex network of interlinking surveillance technologies (if it isn’t already)"
That was 2006.
Google and other companies have been working on this for almost a decade - at the very least.
Actually it is a digital electronic version of the number tattooed onto Jews at places like Dachau,Bergan Belsen ,Mittelwerke etc and for the same purpose.