This advertising strategy undermines people’s right to personal privacy  Targeted advertising based on profiles and demographic details is the product of information acquired in a fashion that is fundamentally invasive of individuals’ privacy. When individuals go online they act as private parties, often enjoying anonymity in their personal activities. Yet online services collate information and seek to use it to market products and services that are specifically tailored to those individuals. This means that individuals’ activities online are in fact susceptible to someone else’s interference and oversight, stealing from them the privacy and security the internet has striven to provide. At the most basic level, the invasion of privacy that collating and using private data gleaned from online behaviour is unacceptable. [1] There is a very real risk of the information being misused, as the data can be held, Facebook for example keeps all information ever entered to the social network, [2] and even resold to third parties that the internet users might not want to come into possession of their personal details. People should always be given the option of consent to the use of their data by any party, as is the case in many jurisdictions, such as the European Union has done in implementing its 'cookie law'. [3] This can lead to serious abuses of individuals’ private information by corporations, or indeed other agents that might have less savoury uses for the information.  [1] The Canadian Press. “Academics Want Watchdog to Probe Online Profiling”. CTV News. 28 July 2008.   [2] Lewis, J., “Facebook faces EU curbs on selling users’ interests to advertisers”, The Telegraph, 26 November 2011,   [3] European Union, “Directive 2009/136/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council”, Official Journal of the European Union, L 337/11, 18 December 2009,