1) I don't do any browser fingerprinting or things like that, but we definitely pay vendors to do it for us (crosswise, owned by oracle does a lot). Users know

1) I don't do any browser fingerprinting or things like that, but we definitely pay vendors to do it for us (crosswise, owned by oracle does a lot). Users know as much about tracking as they do about how a website works - none. If you tried to get an average person to learn about http, html, javascript, cms, dns, cdn, caches, cookies, etc it would be impossible.. tracking is equally as complicated. 2) I only support data in aggregate. Anything personally identifiable should be illegal IMO. As long as target finds 10,000 people who are pregnant due to their shopping habits, I think thats fine. If the system is set up correctly with one company collecting and aggregating data, then another company buying access to that data it is safe. Its a misconception that facebook sells data, they just sell access to it. So most data you can't actually de-anonymize. 3) I definitely support legislation around data storage and yeah I think thats a huge problem right now. Its super easy to collect a ton of data, even when you have no idea how to store it or even use it. Its literally 2 minutes of effort for me to grab every single name of someone who purchased something on ~50 ecom sites, but I know nothing about how to securely store that. As far as the justification for where I work - Ads fuel the internet and create more benefit than they do harm. Millions of people run websites, create content, make free apps. That simply would not occur without ads to monetize them since people are unwillingly to pay for content. Microtransactions for content would be awesome but they haven't worked yet. We're also on year <30 of widespread internet use. Its the wild west right now but we will fix it.