We've been getting discounts, free services, sweepstakes entries, and other goodies, and the companies have just been sitting on the data. Payback time is coming. Our personal contact information is now the asset base of the bubble companies, and soon they will be pressed to monetize their assets. I don't think it will take the bubble companies long to learn that targeted banner advertising is hardly more effective than conventional banner advertising in generating sales. Your phone number, address, and email address are going to be sold six ways from Sunday.
Privacy policies are meaningless.
These third parties, such as DoubleClick, have very different privacy policies. Their policies in fact are to correlate where you surf with your physical name, address and phone number, which they have obtained from other sources. In the next twelve months, if you are home between 6 and 8 PM, I would strongly suggest that you get caller ID or an answering machine. If the IMpersonalization trend is headed where I think it is, you won't want to pick up the phone yourself.