When it comes to developers working with Facebook, "share and share alike" is the new policy.

No one rides the Facebook express for free.

"If you use any Facebook APIs to build personalized or social experiences, you must also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook," Facebook said in a blog post announcing the change.

Only about 5% of retailers currently have the interest or the ability to market to specific customers based on their location, according to Ingle. Most of what brands are interested in is more generalized information about their customers. But in a rapidly evolving and increasingly mobile marketplace, the brands that arrive late to the location-based targeted advertising game may be left out in the cold.

Your smartphone holds a treasure trove of information about you, and cell phone companies are looking for ways to turn that into profit.

"An interesting transformation is happening in wireless, in which consumers are no longer customers -- they're the product," said Dan Hays, principal in PricewaterhouseCooper's communications and technology practice. "The trick is for operators to find out how to make money without violating their relationships and trust with their users."

They may not be paying for the services directly, but customers still have a lot of power -- and companies know that they need to listen.

"We can't just sit back and allow the industry to just continue to ignore a core component of the user experience online," said Alex Fowler, Mozilla's global privacy and public policy leader.

The more devices that connect to the Internet, from smart cars to home thermostats, the more data there are about a person to collect.

Some time later this month we are expecting the European commission to decide how it will proceed with its investigation of the search giant Google, following the latter's submission of proposed remedies at the end of January over allegations that it has engaged in a range of anticompetitive practices.

Google is a global company and its activities will require a global solution.

Google's global revenues were £23.5bn in 2011. Those are its revenues before tax, although Google's approach to tax is another and equally interesting story. Those vast revenues do not come from those who search, but from those who bid to place advertisements alongside the search results. This means that Google has a clear interest to arrange the rankings in a way that maximises its profits and faces a stark conflict of interests when it does so. It has every incentive to demote other companies, who might actually be offering answers or services that are more relevant to the user queries, and to advance its own services.

I would like my browsing and Google searches to be private. I don't want targeted advertising and I don't want to feel that anonymous companies are harvesting my clicks to learn all about me.

When the web was young, and a lot less shiny, web pages were fixed (static) and – barring browser quirks – everybody saw much the same thing. Today, much of the web is dynamic, which means that what you see has been adapted or possibly constructed on the fly just for you.

From your point of view, the advantage is that the websites you visit will be personalised to suit your needs and tastes. From the website's point of view, the advantage is that it can also personalise its prices and advertising to try to suit your needs and tastes, and increase your propensity to click and buy.