Even Disney understands that collecting data has value....

It has been widely reported that Disney has paid more than $3 million to make US regulators go away after it was revealed several sites once operated by its Playdom games division illegally collected and disclosed personal information from thousands of children.  Disney is probably not at fault since they bought Playdom last year and the abuses seem to have been committed prior to the $563 million (August  2010).

According to the LA Times, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claimed that several Disney sites, including an online virtual world called Pony Stars, illegally collected and disclosed personal information. More than 821,000 children kiddies registered with Pony Stars from 2006 to 2010 and 403,000 children provided their information to some of the 19 other virtual worlds operated by Playdom, including 2 Moons, 9 Dragons and My Diva Doll. Playdom's sites harvested children's ages and email addresses during the registration process and allowed them to publicly post personal information including their real names and locations. It did all this without getting parents' consent before collecting or disclosing this information. 

But the question does go deeper - Disney knows that knowing you and about you is important to be able to sell you more......however what I would like is a better barter more like "they more they know the cheaper the products," but Disney seam to charge more the more they know about us....