Seattle pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye. In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories. "My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive. . . . I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private."

America Online's privacy intrusion efforts are so aggressive and offensive, that the only explanation seems to be that AOL thought its clientele was so naïve they would never catch on to the company's privacy invasions.

Amazon.com is currently among the world leaders in distributing information about its users to advertisers, and if they continue this practice the recent advancements in data mining by Amazon threaten to make shopping online with any form of anonymity a thing of the past.

Perhaps the most insidious method of privacy invasion Microsoft employs is the “Windows Live ID ? (formerly Microsoft .NET Passport). The Windows Live ID collects data from the majority of Microsoft networks including MSN, Hotmail, and Xbox Live, and stores them in a central database.