Do the responses to your inquiries indicate that employees of those companies cannot simply input your name and then find out every search you have made, what you "liked," etc.? If so, that is to me a good result. While I might like to know just what personal data the companies have, if they could so easily provide the entire list to me on demand, that would be a red flag that the data could be gathered and provided (or hacked) too readily. Tech workers have often told me that many companies have a policy of terminating an employee who accesses an individual's email or other personal data for unauthorized reason. A good deterrent is an enforced "no tolerance" policy for employees checking individual data, for example to find out the address or chats of a person met at a bar, or of a company manager. I figure the major sites (Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc.) give me a service for free, so I am not as bothered that they collect aggregate data on, for example, what searches are most popular. As for ads, I use an ad blocker, but I note that many news sites ask me to turn off my ad blocker to access their content. Finally, if you do not want to centralize so much data in one place, then perhaps do no sign into a site through Facebook

When I had a Fakebook account, all my data was fake. I would never give any social media company my real data.

Hot a very logical comparison between two different people. Far better to request the information about the SAME person's account in both places.

In Germany, Google maps can not publish any photo of your private property online without your permission. We can only dream about such things like this happening here in the US. That and better, safer food and health/beauty product standards. We're not worthy!

Why doesn't the U.S. simply adopt the European standards? Tech (really ad) companies could be saved their whining about having to follow two different sets of rules.

Pete Townshend celebrated his 73rd birthday on Saturday, May 19 (I think another event was going on that upstaged his big day). Almost 50 years ago, PT predicted the development of a government-run 'Virtual Internet Grid' on which British society would become dependent unnecessarily for survival. PT's 'Lifehouse' project (songs from it were released initially in 1971 on the album 'Who's Next') envisioned a brave hacker's disruption of this so called "modern life" in order to jolt people out of fear and apathy that control their existence. As this NYT article shows, the ironic twist today is private companies try to control our lives; and, now governments of the EU and Canada much more so than the US are engaged in belated efforts to protect privacy and freedom of expression at the same time. Good luck! I agree with Elizabeth's point about how Facebook etc. users abuse themselves. In this context, Pete Townshend stated: "technology will deliver on its promise. Entertainment will finally replace religion."

Even if UK citizens know how much these companies have data on you that still does not stop Google from targeting you with advertisement and following you around the web and pass this information onto other businesses. We can't really live a modern life without Google and Facebook but with programs and applications like Ad Blockers and other tools citizens can fight back somewhat. I have been using a number of different ad blockers and that has helped me somewhat to be clear from seeing the ads that are directed to me. It would be good for the NYTimes to look into a number of different programs like Ad Blockers and how effective they are. In my mind it is the only way to clear the web from some directed advertisement.

This is all bad news. Except for the Europeans. They seem to have their act together.