[cryptoz]

You sign up for those when you get a credit card. You don't sign up for Facebook, they just start tracking you. You don't even have to go online for it to happen. They'll do it from your friend's profiles. It's quite different.

[dingaling]

> You sign up for those when you get a credit card

That is incorrect. Credit agencies create shadow profiles too, they call them 'thin files'. I have had to code around those situations.

Like Facebook they suck-up every scrap of data they can get from their sources. They absolutely do not throw away any of it just because you don't have a credit card ( else they'd omit half of Europe ).

[fixermark]

Ah, quite correct. I meant to say "Consumer reporting agencies" and let "credit" slip in there as a side-effect of my personal experience. :)

https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201604_cfpb_list-of-cons...

... but I think you answered the relevant question, which is that you consider opt-in to having your behavior tracked (even when that behavior interacts with third parties, e.g. visiting someone's website or buying a product from someone's company) morally key. I think the CFPB document I linked above indicates that this is not a universally-accepted principle.