The article goes into depth about how much personal information is sent along to advertisers including a popular dating site's apparently anonymized information about drug use, and sexual orientation.
I think we need a non-profit service that defines a set of privacy licenses (akin to CreativeCommons' licenses) which companies can opt to label their websites/apps with. There would be no policing/auditing [2], but companies found to violate the privacy licenses would be obliged to donate a sum to an organization like the EFF.
That the privacy policies would be encompassed by one simple privacy licence badge would allow users to quickly and easily identify a company's privacy policies. I believe users would gravitate toward using services that display this license.
Edit: it appears such a service is in the works - http://privacycommons.org
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732478440457814...
[2] The auditing process would likely become complex, costly and corruptible