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Comment by NearAP | Hacker News Reader

The article gave gave an example of 'Rewards program' of a company. Using that example, most rewards program give you the option not to receive 'promotional emails' from them. Does this mean such companies will also not upload to Google, the email of someone who has opted not to receive promotional emails? If the companies don't do that, how can a user 'opt out' of not receiving such targeted advertising?

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This isn't about sending emails. It's about Google AdWords display ads. I think it's technically possible to "hide" individual advertisers, but the short answer is: no, the company is under no obligation to stop showing web ads to people who previously said they don't want emails.

Yes, the company may not give your E-Mail address to ANY third party unless directly authorized, and, in the future, even if authorized, companies may not give data of EU users to ANY US company.

That's something different: a legal question. I have no knowledge of EU law.

Doesn't mean that at all. Reward program would just be an example of a not-necessarily-web company that has a list of customer emails. Nothing prevents them from adding your email to that list.

The scary thing is this means Google is targeting and following us on an account basis, not just an anonymous advertiser id.

If only there was some universally accepted 'do not track' feature....

I'm curious - is there any statistic around the number of people who browse while signed in to their google accounts?Personally, I don't do that. I make a conscious effort to be signed out when browsing but I've always wondered if majority of people are like me

> The scary thing is this means Google is targeting and following us on an account basis, not just an anonymous advertiser id

this is only for "Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail"

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