Unfortunately, it's not funny. It's real.

That's more of a warning about identity theft than the loss of anonymity. Phone numbers can be easy to spoof.

This kind of confuses diffferent things we should worry about. A special tax on fattening foods or other government impositions is frightening and intrusive. Specific information about me in the hands of others is worrying and annoying. What's really frightening is the combination of the two. But I am not very worried about big retailers sifting, comparing, and mining aggregate data (not on particular people) to identify neighborhoods or mailing lists that would be likely candidates for sales or offers of products. It's a really effective ad, though.