Can you imagine walking up to a guy on the street and saying something like "Hey there. If you tell me the names and contact information for all of your friends, the conversations you've had with them, the type of products you like, your occupation and lots of other demographic information? I'll let you play this little game with bottle caps"

Yet to many technologists working on the internet this seems like a perfectly reasonable trade to ask people to make.

So are people aware of what they are doing and are making a fair trade? Or are we taking advantage of folks simply because the technology is new?

There is a moral component to modern software development. Many of us technology folks don't like to talk about it, but simply because we don't talk about it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.