The interesting question on this is, just WHAT is spying? Any time you or I request a web page, the server that returns the page has to know where to send it, like to your computer. Even if they don't know who is sitting in front of the screen, they know the IP address of the recipient, and sometimes can identify where that comes from. It's essential to the operation....where to send the web page. There's not way to NOT give them that information if you want a web page.
The other big way of "spying" is a cookie that saves what you look for so you don't always have to go back to square one on a web site. It remembers your preferences and can remember what you did, etc. Saving your clicks is another way of "spying". All of this is information you give up, not a matter of mind-reading or hacking your computer. We give THEM this info.
The real magic of advertising is that they are just using the information they get from your clicking habits to target advertising. Like I noted before, I must be a hard nut to crack because the ads I get are so bad and off target. The key thing is to remember that YOU are giving them this information. Like yelling in the town square, don't say it if you don't want someone to hear it. All of this data gathering is a matter of you giving it to them. Once you click on their servers, it's their information and they can use it.
Prior to my current life, I was one of the guys behind the server wall in a government agency. You would be astonished to know how much we knew, stuff that people just gave away to us. Fortunately, we were the good guys and were very careful, but yeah, that's the scary part of all this. You do need to be aware of what you give away on line. I don't think there's really any way to pass a law about that, especially with the global nature of these systems.
