Most people do not consider a visit to a website to be a financial transaction unless they purchase something. They open a page, read an article, search for a product, or review a company’s services without realizing that valuable information may be generated from nearly every action they take.
A website visit can reveal the page viewed, search terms used, approximate location, device type, IP address, referring website, advertisements clicked, products considered, and time spent on particular content. Depending on the website and technologies involved, this information may be transmitted to advertising, analytics, and social-media companies within seconds.
One isolated event may appear insignificant. A page view by itself does not reveal a person’s entire life. The value appears when thousands of signals are combined over time.
Those signals can become a detailed profile of a person’s habits, interests, concerns, financial circumstances, health questions, relationships, and likely future behavior. Companies can use that profile to determine which advertisement to display, which product to recommend, which customer appears most likely to make a purchase, and even which price or discount may be most effective.
Consumers are repeatedly told that online services are free. In reality, many people pay with information about themselves.
The Federal Trade Commission has described commercial surveillance as the business of collecting, analyzing, and profiting from information about people. The agency has also warned that technologies used in everyday life can enable nearly constant observation of people’s activities.
In a 2024 report examining major social-media and video-streaming companies, the FTC concluded that companies collected enormous amounts of personal information and monetized it through advertising. The report explained that services described as “free” are often paid for through consumers’ data and attention.
That is an important distinction. A service without a subscription fee is not necessarily free. The company may be receiving something far more valuable than a monthly payment: continuous information about the consumer.
The company can use that information repeatedly. It may help improve advertising, train recommendation systems, measure customer behavior, create marketing audiences, develop new products, and predict future purchases. Unlike a one-time payment, personal information can continue producing value long after it was originally collected.
The FTC’s report on social-media and video-streaming companies described how extensive data collection supports business models worth billions of dollars annually.
Companies often minimize privacy concerns by describing the information they collect as ordinary technical data. They may say that they received only an IP address, device identifier, cookie value, page address, or advertising event.
That explanation separates each piece of information from the larger system in which it operates.
An IP address can help determine a person’s approximate location and connect activity occurring during the same internet session. A persistent identifier can allow activity to be recognized over time. A page address may reveal the subject a person was researching. A referring address can reveal where the person came from. A purchase event can indicate what the person bought and when.
The commercial value does not necessarily come from one field viewed alone. It comes from combining information.
A company may not need a person’s name if it can consistently recognize that person’s device, categorize the person’s interests, predict what the person is likely to purchase, and deliver advertising specifically selected for that individual.
Calling the information “technical” does not make it commercially meaningless. In many cases, its technical nature is exactly what makes large-scale tracking possible.
The most valuable data does not merely describe what someone has already done. It helps companies predict what that person may do next.
A consumer who visits several pages about mortgage rates may be preparing to purchase a home. Someone reading about debt relief may be experiencing financial difficulty. A visitor reviewing pregnancy information may be expecting a child. A person searching for counseling or medication may be dealing with a private health condition.
Each action may seem ordinary when viewed by itself. Together, they can reveal significant changes in a person’s life.
Companies can use these predictions to divide consumers into groups, target advertisements, prioritize sales leads, and identify people who may be especially receptive to a particular message.
This is why browsing activity has value even when the consumer never creates an account or completes a purchase. The abandoned search, unfinished application, or product considered but not purchased may still improve the company’s understanding of that person.
The consumer may leave the website empty-handed. The company may still leave with commercially useful information.
Data collection may affect more than advertising. It can potentially affect the offers, discounts, products, and prices presented to different consumers.
In 2025, the FTC released findings from a study of what it calls “surveillance pricing.” The agency found that intermediaries could use information about consumers’ behavior and characteristics to help businesses determine individualized prices or promotions.
The information considered could include location, browser history, shopping activity, and other behavioral data. The FTC reported that some systems could show higher-priced products based on a consumer’s searches and purchase history.
The FTC’s surveillance-pricing findings raise a serious question: What happens when companies know more about a consumer’s willingness or ability to pay than the consumer knows about the company’s pricing system?
Traditional pricing allows shoppers to compare the same public price. Surveillance pricing can create an environment in which two people receive different offers based on conclusions drawn from their personal information.
A company might use data to offer a legitimate discount to someone likely to respond. But the same technology could also identify people believed to be less price-sensitive, in urgent need, or unlikely to comparison shop.
The consumer may never know that personal information influenced the result.
Information about a person’s health can be extraordinarily sensitive. It may reveal medical conditions, medications, fertility concerns, mental-health questions, or treatment decisions.
It can also be commercially valuable.
In its action involving online counseling service BetterHelp, the FTC alleged that the company disclosed information—including email addresses, IP addresses, and responses to health-related questions—to advertising platforms despite making promises about the limited use of consumers’ information.
According to the FTC’s complaint, BetterHelp’s use of health information for advertising brought the company hundreds of thousands of new users and millions of dollars in additional revenue.
That allegation demonstrates the direct connection between sensitive information and corporate profit. The information was valuable because it could improve advertising performance and help locate additional customers with similar characteristics.
The FTC’s BetterHelp announcement explains the agency’s allegations and the restrictions it imposed.
The FTC also took action involving the Premom ovulation-tracking application. The agency alleged that information disclosed to third parties could reveal details about users’ reproductive health, pregnancy status, physical conditions, devices, and precise location.
The FTC’s Premom announcement shows how information produced through an application can move into advertising and analytics systems.
Consumers may believe they are privately researching a health concern. The company may see an opportunity to categorize, advertise to, and profit from a highly specific audience.
Location information does more than show where a person was at a particular moment. A history of locations can reveal where someone lives, works, worships, receives medical treatment, attends school, or spends time with family.
A single location may appear harmless. A pattern of locations can describe a person’s life.
The FTC has brought actions against companies involved in collecting and selling precise location information. The agency has expressed concern that location data can expose visits to sensitive places, including medical facilities, places of worship, domestic-violence shelters, and other locations capable of revealing private circumstances.
This information may be gathered through mobile applications, advertising identifiers, software tools, and companies most consumers have never heard of.
That creates another imbalance. The consumer interacts with one website or application, but information from that interaction may become valuable to multiple companies operating behind the scenes.
The consumer may recognize the name of the application being used. The consumer may have no relationship with, or knowledge of, the other businesses receiving value from the interaction.
Companies frequently describe data as anonymous, aggregated, de-identified, or hashed. Those terms can create the impression that the information cannot be connected to a person.
The reality is more complicated.
Removing a name does not automatically remove every method of recognizing an individual. Persistent identifiers, location patterns, device characteristics, email-derived values, and combinations of behavioral signals may still allow information to be linked to a particular person or device.
A company may argue that it does not know the real-world name associated with an identifier. But if the company can recognize the same person across multiple visits, determine that person’s interests, and select advertising based on the resulting profile, the lack of a visible name provides limited practical comfort.
Privacy should not depend entirely on whether a company can immediately attach “John Smith” to a record. Consistent recognition and individualized treatment can affect a person even when the system displays only a number or coded identifier.
Companies sometimes collect information simply because the technology allows them to do so.
Marketing departments want more detailed attribution. Advertising platforms encourage businesses to transmit additional events. Analytics vendors promise improved insights. Developers install tools that offer dashboards, audience measurement, and automated optimization.
Each additional data point may appear useful. Very few departments are rewarded for collecting less.
This creates a “collect now, decide later” mentality. Information is gathered because it may become valuable in the future, even when it is not necessary to provide the service the consumer requested.
The risks are transferred to the public. Consumers face the possibility of unwanted profiling, manipulation, discrimination, security breaches, and uses that did not exist when the information was originally collected.
The company retains the potential commercial value.
Responsible privacy practices require the opposite approach. A company should identify a legitimate purpose before collecting information, limit collection to what is reasonably necessary, restrict how it is used, and delete it when it is no longer required.
Many websites display banners asking visitors to accept or reject tracking. The presence of a banner may create the appearance that the consumer controls what happens.
But meaningful consent depends on the website’s actual operation—not simply the words shown on the screen.
A choice presented after information has already been transmitted is not a meaningful choice. A “Reject All” button that still permits nonessential advertising activity does not provide the control its label promises. A privacy policy buried behind several links cannot replace a clear decision made before optional collection occurs.
Companies may benefit from creating the appearance of consent without accepting the commercial consequences of honoring it. They can reassure visitors with privacy language while maintaining the flow of information that supports advertising and analytics.
Consent should be informed, specific, and respected by the technology. It should not function as a public-relations layer placed over a system designed to collect as much information as possible.
Companies often speak about data as though it naturally belongs to whoever collects it. But the information exists because a person visited a page, searched for a subject, considered a purchase, shared a concern, or carried a device through the world.
The consumer produced the underlying activity.
Businesses then organize that activity into profiles, predictions, audiences, and commercial opportunities. The processing may add value, but the raw material still comes from human behavior.
If personal information is valuable enough to support some of the world’s largest advertising and technology companies, it is valuable enough to deserve meaningful protection.
Consumers should not be told that their data is worthless when they raise privacy concerns while companies simultaneously use the same information to improve advertising, increase revenue, develop products, and influence purchasing decisions.
Both claims cannot be true at the same time.
Privacy is sometimes misunderstood as the desire to hide embarrassing or illegal activity. That definition is far too narrow.
Privacy is the ability to decide who knows something about you, when they learn it, and what they are permitted to do with it. It protects personal autonomy, dignity, and freedom from manipulation.
A person may willingly discuss a medical concern with a healthcare service but not want that concern used to select advertisements. Someone may provide an address for delivery without wanting it incorporated into a long-term marketing profile. A consumer may browse a product without agreeing to be followed across unrelated websites.
The information does not have to be secret to deserve protection. Context matters.
Providing information for one purpose should not automatically authorize every profitable secondary use a company or its partners can imagine.
Data can support useful services. Analytics can help businesses improve websites. Advertising can introduce consumers to relevant products. Personalization can make technology more convenient.
The problem is not that data has value. The problem is that the exchange is often hidden, one-sided, and poorly understood.
A fair system would tell consumers what information is being collected, identify the companies receiving it, explain the actual purposes of collection, and allow optional uses to be refused without manipulation. Companies would collect only what they need and would remain responsible for the vendors they choose.
Most importantly, a fair system would recognize that consent has economic consequences. When a consumer refuses optional tracking, the company may lose some advertising value. That is not a defect in the consent process. It is the result of respecting the consumer’s decision.
A choice is not genuine if the company intends to honor it only when doing so does not interfere with profit.
The value of personal information cannot always be measured by assigning a few cents to one page view or one advertising identifier. Its true value comes from scale, combination, prediction, and influence.
Data helps companies understand what people want, what they fear, what they can afford, and what may persuade them. It can determine which messages they see, which opportunities are presented, and how businesses attempt to shape their decisions.
That is economic power.
Consumers should therefore reject the argument that routine browsing information is automatically insignificant. If information is detailed enough to target an advertisement, classify a person, predict behavior, or influence a price, it is important enough to protect.
The internet does not have to operate as a system in which consumers unknowingly surrender information while companies quietly extract its value. Digital services can be useful, profitable, and respectful of privacy at the same time.
But that requires honesty about the transaction.
When a company collects information about you, it is receiving something of value. When it uses that information to increase revenue, your activity has become part of its business model. When it shares that information with other companies, the commercial value extends beyond the website you intentionally visited.
Your data is not free. The question is whether companies will finally be required to treat it that way.
My name is Joseph Sides. I am a Florida-based privacy advocate, data privacy consultant, entrepreneur, and writer focused on digital transparency and consumer protection. My work examines tracking pixels, cookies, analytics tools, software development kits, and other technologies companies use to collect, transmit, and profit from consumers’ personal information.
I research how websites and digital services interact with third-party advertising and analytics platforms and advocate for meaningful consent, stronger consumer protections, responsible data practices, and greater corporate accountability. I believe consumers deserve to know what information companies collect, where that information is sent, and how it is ultimately used.
I hold a bachelor’s degree in criminology with a minor in business from Florida State University. My background in analytical research, business, and data privacy informs my writing about online tracking and corporate data practices.
Outside of my professional work, I am an entrepreneur, family man, charitable supporter, and dog lover. I write practical articles to help consumers understand digital privacy and the ways companies profit from personal information.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Whether a particular data practice violates the law depends on the specific facts, technology, representations, consent process, jurisdiction, and applicable law.
