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Dennis, everyone draws their personal privacy lines at a different place but the question is what gives any company the right to collect personal information and why would you assume that they're treating the data they collect with appropriate security.
Let's take Amazon out of the picture. The iPhone 3G has wireless connectivity and a built in GPS. It has the technical capability to track where I am 24 hours a day and report the data back to Apple. Should I ask why would Apple care where I was and why would I assume they would want the information? Maybe you wouldn't care if they did something like that but I sure would. If someone used the information to rob your house while you were out of town I imagine you would care. (Yes I know Apple wouldn't be stupid enough to do this).
GMail isn't free. You pay for it by selling your email privacy to Google. If you're willing to pay that price that's fine with me.
The Air Miles program is used to track personal purchasing information about people. Some people know this and think the benefits are worth it. Some people choose not to use the program because of it. Most people don't know they're selling their personal purchasing information to collect air miles. Some of these would care others wouldn't.
I think it's a good thing that people challenge companies about the data they collect and how they do it. I don't think we should trust companies to handle the data appropriately.
I don't think it's sufficient to bury the fact that they're collecting the information in a 50 page end user agreement that nobody reads. If a company want to collect information about me they should have to get my explicit agreement with the default that I opt out.
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