Privacy vs. advertising?

I have been slacking off lately, but now I am back in full swing. Here is one ideea that caught my eye in the last few weeks: identity theft. It seems to be the big problem that has been circulating the net lately, and I thought I'd have a crack at it.

I'm not going to talk about "phishing" or "hacking" or any other name similar to these, as how identity gets stolen is not the issue I am after. It is what happens with it after it gets stolen that concerns me.

First of all, I want to make it clear to everyone what "identity theft" means. It is when another person gets hold of your personal details like name, address, social security number, credit card number, or any other personal information.

I have recently read a lot of stories about ISP's and a number of companies that are meant to keep your personal data, well... personal, that are selling this information to advertising companies. Yes, that's right. Advertising companies are paying a pretty buck for your personal information. That is because the latest online trend is targeted advertising.

Now this is where a moral dilema comes into play. The fact that these companies are selling your information without your knowledge is clearly wrong. But on the other side, privacy advocates are jumping on advertising companies for gathering any information about the individual user. This, for me, is another extreme. I would much rather have advertising companies gather information about me andshowingme targeted advertising that have them not do that and show me aderts about... cooking pots.

In fact, yo yell you the truth, I never found any harm in some company gathering information about my navigation habits or search queries. If you really think about it, it is ultimately in my best interest. I don't know about you, but me, for one, I am not selling trade secrets online or searching for state secrets. But I am tired of looking at all sorts of adverts concerning a lot of things I am not interested about.

On the other hand, I am not on the same side of companies that gather information about me withouot my knowledge. Just give me an option: "would you like your browsing habits to be recorded anonymously?". In fact, I am willingly participating in a regular survey done by a specilalised company. If taking 15-20 minutes out of my time means a some company will make a better, or euphemistically speaking, a perfect product for me, than I cannot see the harm in information gathering. Do you?