Ironically, the popular media has historically been the one of the largest sources of consumer data for ages through magazine subscriptions. They sell their dat

Ironically, the popular media has historically been the one of the largest sources of consumer data for ages through magazine subscriptions. They sell their data to brokers like Axciom (and many others) who package it and literally sell it for cash for anywhere from a few pennies per record on up depending on what features you want. Just addresses, addresses and phone numbers, number of cars owned, family make-up, age, etc. Facebook is honestly quite humane in comparison. No one knows this stuff exists except direct marketers, which is why it doesn't get any attention. Facebook gets much larger quantities of mundane information like you clicked on a news article, or you went on vacation to a certain place, etc. It also has social graph information that data brokers don't typically have like "is close friends with a woman with an upcoming birthday." That is a real ad targeting example you can do on Facebook.