It's able to do this because for decades the company has been keeping tabs on what customers buy and then adds to customer profiles demographic information such as age, marital status, number of children, what neighborhoods they live in, their estimated salaries, what credit cards they use and what web sites they frequent.

Of course, this kind of customer profiling is done all the time by almost every major retailer, as well as online companies such as Facebook and Google that profit by serving you targeted ads based on the personal data or Internet usage data they have on you.

Strictly speaking, targeted ads can be useful; if you've got to put up with it, it might as well be for something you might actually buy.

But customer and user profiling by big business can get creepy.

If you've ever looked yourself up on Spokeo you may know how troublesome it can be to see things like your name, address, family members, age, wealth level, occupation, astrological sign, house value, hobbies, interests and ethnicity made public for the world to see.