For those of us who have been wondering exactly how monitored our Internet sessions are, well… they are! According to a recent study by comScore and the New York Times, companies such as Yahoo, MySpace, AOL and Google keep tracks of our online habits and preferences.

There is one well pre-determined purpose in all these monitoring: the advertising business. In what the newspaper called “targeted advertising”, advertisers want their ads to been seen by people who would be interested in it, rather than the entire audience.

In other words, data collection! According to the study, “companies use that information to predict what content and advertisement people most likely want to see.” And the methodology isn’t complicated at all.

The companies collect user data based on the pages displayed, on search queries, on videos played or advertising displayed. This is how they learn of the user’s preferences and tastes, and when you have that, you most certainly have the power to direct ads to people that would be interested in them.

To break it down in simple elements: each time we search for information on whatever products or services, for example drinks, hotels, airlines etc., we will most likely start seeing more and more ads in those particular fields.

There haven’t been complaints so far, or maybe because most of us weren’t even aware of the phenomenon, but “when you start to get into details, it’s scarier than you might expect,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the electronic Privacy Information Center said for the New York Times.

The position of the companies towards breaking either privacy or taking advantage of their users is a defensive one, as they consider their practices to be anything but privacy-breaking ones, saying the names and personal data of their clients are protected at all times.