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Turns out, not everybody likely will comply. A news report about Revenue Science breathes a whole different message than what ad organizations relayed publicly ten days ago.

The advertizing organizations then said at a Federal Trade Regulator conference that ad agencies will have the decency not to obtain sensitive private data or abuse it. But an interview with the top man at patent winning company Revenue Science indicates that the sale of private cookie based data is expected to know no limits in future.

An article in ClickZ about the way Revenue Science’s bosses think the business will evolve is an eye opener to say the very least.

Revenue Science reportedly went ‘a step beyond the behavioral targeting network model’. The company, having collected enough data for advertisers to be able to conduct about the most targeted ad campaign ever in the world, is selling it by means of the novelty of the century; an exchange platform that directly connects advertisers with publishers.

The difference between Revenue Science and other ad exchanges including Microsoft's AdECN and Yahoo's Right Media, is that the latter two allow media buyers to place bids and publishers to offer inventory by using their exchange interfaces themselves, and that Revenue Science's exchange technology is for use behind the scenes by the company alone. "For now,” reports Clickz.

Not only is the likely highly personal cookie based data sale accepted as a laudable business strategy, the company has even been awarded a U.S. Patent for this technology. It has other patents pending. Oh yeah, and Revenue Science sells behaviorally-targeted ads 'on behalf of the highest bidding advertisers’.

Get the dynamics? The company collecting your and my cookie information is selling this on public auctions to the highest bidders. In an unregulated market, what happens in situations of scarce supply? Will they break into our houses to check out how much cash we’ve stashed under our mattresses? Where does this stop?

The really scary part is that Revenue Science says that the information it has in its possession will get widely distributed. The company’s CTO Basem Nayfeh says soon this type of data will be sold on exchanges. "That's definitely where we're headed," he was quoted as saying.

That contrasts strongly with the message of professional advertising agency representatives. They promised, never to collect sensitive data and said they would think about ways of informing consumers of their activities as well as allowing them to opt out. Participating organizations were also discussing creating lists of excluded customers.

Advertising organizations like Revenue Science might be getting away with selling customers' private data because they are not officially breaking any laws. But the results of this development are that they can virtually take over people’s private lives. Self regulation promises do not guarantee that if one organization books phenomenal results due to the sale of people’s personal data, others won’t soon do the same. The ad business is cut throat.

"With the introduction of the exchange element, the behavioral targeting network sector seems to be getting even more complicated than before", Clickz writes. The more complicated the landscape becomes, the more scope there is for fiddling.

The data accumulated by Revenue Science reveals user patterns "on network sites and non-network sites", Clickz writes, adding that the company "determines which users might be in-market for a car or a mortgage loan, for instance". When you are sitting behind your computer and are happily browsing around a car website because you happen to love cars, you will unwittingly be "recognized by the ad serving platform and served a targeted ad based on previous interactions with that site".

"We're looking at augmenting in many ways the publisher business," Nayfeh, was quoted as saying. His company's clients include ABCNews, IAC Interactive Corp, Newsweek and Terra.com.

Nayfeh did not mention any publishers wishing to buy the ad information. But it is more liberal with information toward publisher clients.