[jacquesm]

> so they make it up by showing you ads.

Correction: they make it up by giving third parties the ability to lift each and every bit of identifiable information available from your browser, to profile you, to sell your demographic information (lat/lon/approximate age/wealth/family situation/etc, etc) to middlemen who will then in turn sell the opportunity to advertise to you in a real time bidding process to the highest bidder, some ad agency that bought campaign inventory.

If it was just the ads I highly doubt there would be any issue at all.

[dingo_bat]

Exactly. If Wired would show me static image ads that do not slow down my browser with scripts and use my bandwidth to track me across the web, I would add them to my whitelist.

[ariwilson]

Wired doesn't know any of that stuff about you. Facebook and Google might which is why they have strong privacy policies and opt out procedures.

[CaptSpify]

Wired may or may not, I don't know. But they are the facilitator for this info. Also, Facebook and Google may have "opt out" procedures, but they've been... less than trustworthy with those in the past, and I simply don't trust them.