[jmillikin]

  > Arguably customized ads is still selling user's personal data

I think this is not true, and that it's an important distinction to make.

Selling a user's data means that a site has taken information the user gave them, and sent that data to a third party in some non-anonymous format. It's an unconscionable breach of trust. When there's some service that tells any site a user visits what that visitor's home address is, that's horrifying. It's like having a friend who forwards your private facebook posts to 4chan.

In contrast, when a service uses personal data to change what ads are shown, the data is never sent to a third party. If you tell Google my address so map search gives local results, then they might use that to filter out ads for stores in a different state, but they won't tell those stores where you live.

[azakai]

I definitely see the difference. However, even in the second case, the user's data is being used to make a profit; the company collecting the data and showing the ads is making the ads more valuable - i.e. making more money off of them - with the user's data.

Again, I totally agree that selling the data to a third party is much worse.