In the age of the Internet, marketers are watching what their customers do online in an effort to better aim ads at potential consumers. The Wall Street Journal reports that major companies are turning to smaller start-ups to help them use social networking data to target their advertising, and the trend is raising concerns among privacy advocates. One company, for example, reports that it tracks five billion online connections to weigh the data included in friend-acquaintance connections. Such ad targeting practices are raising concerns about privacy at the federal level, the report states, with some lawmakers preparing to introduce legislation in the coming weeks to make Web site tactics for collecting information on their users more transparent. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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