to tens or hundreds of companies, which lets advertisers compete for the opportunity to show you an ad. Advertising is necessary, and this sounds OK. But wait until you hear what information about you is in that big broadcast: it can include your – inferred sexual orientation, political views, whether you are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, etc., whether you have AIDs, erectile dysfunction, or bi-polar disorder. It includes what you are reading, watching, and listening to. It includes your location, sometimes right up to your exact GPS coordinates. And it includes unique ID codes that are as specific to you as is your social security number, so that all of this data can be tied to you over time. This allows companies you have never heard of to maintain intimate profiles on you, and on everyone you have ever known. . (6) Online surveillance techniques are becoming more sophisticated. According to the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, new website tracking software can provide real-time surveillance of an individual’s online activity: Unlike typical analytics services, that provide aggregate statistics, these scripts are intended for recording and playback of individual browsing sessions, as if someone is looking over your shoulder. . (7) The volume of data now publicly available and attributable to a specific individual permits researchers to infer private information about that individual that the individual never disclosed publicly. (8) According to a study from researchers at Cambridge University and Microsoft Research, an individual’s social media posts, pictures, and profile information can be combined to reliably infer that individual’s latent personality traits, including openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Prior to internet-based data tracking, the only way to obtain that type of sensitive psychological data would have been for an individual to elect to respond to a detailed personality questionnaire. (9) According to a study published by