Thumbs up:A coalition of privacy groups in the US wants a mandatory "do not track" list to be set up to control the way that advertisers use information about the websites that people visit to deliver advertisements to them.
Advertisers say that behavioural targeting is good because it allows consumers to receive ads relevant to them rather than generic ones.
However, privacy advocates believe that most people are not aware of the level of personal information that they are sharing with marketers as they surf the internet.
Switching on to fraud
Thumbs down: A US woman last week pleaded guilty to wire fraud for stealing $412,000 (€286,000) worth of merchandise from home shopping channel QVC.
The woman discovered a bug in the channel's online ordering system, which meant that she would still receive merchandise without being charged if she cancelled her order immediately after placing it.
Over the course of six months during 2005, she ordered over 1,800 items from the shopping channel, which she subsequently sold on auction website eBay.
QVC didn't catch on to the glitch in their online ordering system. Instead, the woman exploited the problem and was only caught when two women in Alabama contacted the channel after growing suspicious about items that they had bought from her on eBay.
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