Phuncz,
I don't disagree with the general thrust of your rant.
I do take some small solace, however, in knowing that many implementations of big data harvesting are flawed or are of limited value - either due to time, limited information or space. For example, my Google profile has me pegged as a computer scientist due to the websites (like this one) that I frequent, rather than my actual occupation.
My wife has worked in online advertising for years, and it seems that many of the campaigns she works on get optimized for "clickthrough" - never mind that maximizing that particular metric results in useless clicks as a great many clicks are generated by web-bots and spiders. It seems that actual real people (Nigerian inheritance and Cryptolocker scams notwithstanding) don't very often intentionally click on ads.
I do sympathize with your wish that privacy statements were more plain language. "Yes, we collect data based on your interaction with our website. Yes, we sell that data to others. If US law enforcement wants your information, we hand it to them on a silver platter. You've been warned."
I assume any "free" service is provided that way because I, or my eyeballs, am the product. That being said, I use an adblocker in my browser. Since companies and governments cannot be trusted to do the right thing, as "the right thing" is a matter of interpretation, I accept a limit to my privacy or forgo the convenience of a "free" service.
J
