>>The information analysts and behavioral scientists are busy looking for better ways to predict how all sorts of subsets of individuals will behave.<<
Hari Seldon lives, baby!
> At the end of the day, however, they are taking something that is mine - unique information.
> I think that whenever somebody uses my information, they should pay a tax.
Not tax but royalties to the owner of the information, if the owner wants them.
Once a week, or once a month, delete all Google cookies.
The way to do this is to search your cookies (easy in Firefox), for “utma”. That is not just Google’s cookies, but any other website that uses Google’s tools, with of course, the information going back to Google.
Then, for the ‘advanced’ paranoia control, Adobe provides what are called “flash cookies”, that use flash to backup cookie information, so if a cookie is deleted, all its data is automatically restored.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
This is an Adobe page that shows you the flash cookies you currently have on your computer. The image on your screen is *not* a picture, but a control panel. If there is a flash cookie for some website you want to purge, delete it here *first*, then delete their cookie in your browser.