TMI?

How much of your personal information are you willing to share with advertisers? It’s a really important question.

Or, perhaps more importantly, do you have any idea how much information is actually being harvested, what's being doing with that data, and what, if anything, can you do to prevent your entire digital existence from being documented?

The answers to all of these, and the milieu of other questions raised regarding online privacy are, in my opinion, at the very core of advertising’s conscience.

So imagine you saw this icon in the corner of an ad on Facebook. (You know the ones that somehow magically know what year you graduated?) Because you likely will.

It’s part of a new self-regulatory campaign breaking this summer. The creation of a trade group(pdf)  that formed in response to a stern warning from the FTC that said, in essence, “If you don’t do something about online privacy we will.”

The icon takes you to a site that purports to tell you everything you need to know about online tracking. Though they seem to prefer the term targeting, which I happen to find somehow equally if not more unsettling.

As for me, I’m tracking this one. It’s a fascinating and unprecedented chapter in the evolution of marketing.

While it would be great to see the ad industry take the high road here and trust people with their personal online identities, the site tries a little too hard to convince me not to worry.

Plus, if I was really concerned about the issue and wanted to opt out, it took more than a few clicks and a lot of reading to figure out how to turn off my online ankle monitor. This has to be something the site architect clearly considered.

For now, call me idealistic, or maybe a bit old-fashioned, but I choose honesty. If you know you’re being watched and you agree, it’s cool if a little kinky. It you don’t, it’s stalking. I’d encourage you to comment, but who knows who may be watching.