My Online Shopping Cart is Chosen before I Know

Technology, the internet, and social media is exponentially becoming more and more advanced. There are a lot of things I've noticed on the web that were never in existence only a couple a years ago, but has quickly taken over the way we function. One of them being advertisements. "Back in the day" advertisements were just a quick blurb in the newspaper or a thirty second commercial on TV. Now, you can't go to a website without something on the sidebar or an ad popping up that you have to annoyingly sit through, even though you try to fast forward it anyways. What I find particularly interesting, and slightly disturbing, is the fact that the type of ads that pop up now are based on me. There are these complex algorithms going on in the internet, which can pick and choose what ads appear on my screen by tracking the websites I visit and what I purchase online. As stated by Alexis C. Madrigal, from The Atlantic, "Already, the web sites you visit reshape themselves before you like

a carnivorous school of fish, and this is only the beginning. Right now, a huge chunk of what you've ever looked at on the Internet is sitting in databases all across the world. The line separating all that it might say about you, good or bad, is as thin as the letters of your name. If and when that wall breaks down, the numbers may overwhelm the name. The unconsciously created profile may mean more than the examined self I've sought to build."  It even goes so far as to pick ads of things I may need in the future, before I even need it myself. For example, I know a person who just got married. After looking and buying everything for her wedding day, ads for baby items started popping up on her screen. Another example--my boyfriend loves chocolate milk. I was talking to him about how there's a type of mug with a stirrer attached specifically made for chocolate milk. The next day, an ad for that exact same mug showed up on his screen. The web is starting to predict the things I want to buy online, half of the time before I even know I do. I do understand why it is what it is. All of the internet tracking started as a security precaution, when terrorism started becoming more prevalent. When big named companies saw the opportunity to advertise more efficiently and make more money, they took it, which is understandable. To me personally, however, something about it just steps over the line a little bit too much. It  makes me wonder what information they have and how much they know about me, which I didn't personally give them permission to. Well, maybe I did by not reading those terms and conditions, but besides that. If this is the case now, how much more can they get from me in the next 5 years, or even 10 years. When and where is the line going to be drawn? Will this keep me from going on the web, as of now not really, but it does make me think.