Ads are just another means for companies to capture data about individual people, that's the new commodity in an information age. The more data you collect the more you can mine it to learn various things. It may help you sell a product better by analysing how people view adverts and what they then buy. Or it could be used to manipulate people into making certain decisions based on false information.
We are in the wild west stage of the internet still, tech companies are light years ahead of Politicians who don't understand how the internet or the technology behind it works. All of the data being mined from us will likely be used to develop Artificial intelligence. Shouldn't come as a surprise that the likes of Google are heavily invested in the development of quantum computing. Of course it's not just the tech companies that are data mining, the intelligence services around the globe are doing it as well. There is no privacy any more, once something goes onto a server it tends to float around in the ether. It takes a lot of effort to destroy data, but it's usually fairly easy to extract it (depends on the damage to the hard drives or flash memory). Unless of course you chuck a hard drive or SSD into a furnace and melt it down.
Not even remotely true.
well that would depend on your own social circle..