[fenwick67]

> google doesn't do things like look at your specific address, preferred colors, etc

Who are you to say they don't try and figure out your favorite color based on all of their input data? If Google shared exactly how their secret sauce advertising algorithms work, they'd be out of business.

> You can opt out of all behavior based advertiser very easily: http://optout.networkadvertising.org and http://optout.aboutads.info/#!/

If these companies wanted to respect users' wishes in a frictionless way, they'd just look at my DNT header. This is bread and circus.

[ovao]

Is trying to derive a person’s preferences from tangentially-related data immoral, or does it only become immoral when it’s done in an attempt to sell a product?

[fenwick67]

Deriving preferences is not inherently bad. It's immoral to undermine people's will for profit. This is the same reason the gambling industry is immoral, and making manipulative free-to-play mobile games is immoral. You're basically hacking people's subconscious for your own gain at their loss.

[soared]

DNT headers broke when microsoft decided to enable it by default, so they became meaningless.