User profiling is now a pivotal part of e-commerce, it has been claimed by the World Privacy Forum (WPF).
Increasingly, businesses are building up a profile of what consumers search for online and which sites they visit.
Pam Dixon, executive director of the WPF, said: "This sort of activity is not only common, it has become part and parcel of e-commerce and now even traditional business models.
"For the commercial sector there are no specific limits unless the companies have written them into their privacy policies."
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the World Wide Web, speaking in Geneva, said that he was concerned about the emergency of user profiling and labelled it as "snooping", according to AFP.
He added that it was very important the information isn't "interfered with or molested" as it travels around the internet and suggested that an automatic building up of a person's online habits should be avoided.
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