It sounds like you are taking issue with paid surveys, and on the face of it I see nothing wrong. As it currently stands, our telephone numbers, residential addresses, email addresses, criminal record, and the like are all publicly available. Surveillance technology is keeping eyes and ears on us in malls and fitting rooms. Photo cameras ensure that we aren't speeding through intersections on the red. Our conceptions of an appropriate level of privacy and the true extent we possess are already discordant. Increasingly, technology is helping ensure that people doing illegal things get caught doing illegal things. The easy moral of the story is that one should stop doing illegal things, unless the law is in violation of some crucial ethical or reasonable standard. Then one is still likely to get caught--but at least he or she acts on behalf of their principles.
But the scenario you have described is none of these. It is, rather, the voluntary exchange of one valuable commodity (information) for another (goods and services) and of such contracts between consenting adults I can find little fault. As for myself, I am a savvy enough consumer to avoid giving our addresses and phone numbers and the like to corporations because I don't want the annoyance of receiving their promotional offers and advertisements. I dispense the wisdom of my practices to friends and family.
But I really do believe that few could enter into these sorts of agreements and give out personal information without giving thought to the potential annoyances it might bring. That is perhaps uncharacteristically optimistic on my behalf. Low-income people are not any more or less stupid than high-income people, and desperation may or may not be a factor. But if people choose to derail their common sense, there can be no saving them, and to have the government attempt to protect these misled poor could only create more needless beauracracy.
And I'm rambling.
Cynic
