Internet advertising is under the gun because -- for some people -- it actually works too well.

Well-intentioned groups such as the Center for Digital Democracy get all freaked out when marketers boast of the ability to use technology to track -- or at least make solid predictions about -- just about every facet of a consumer's life.

We live in the glorious 21st century now, which is a world where corporations can potentially divine everything from one's musical tastes to one's bedroom kinks.

As many of us increasingly use our mobile devices and Web browsers to manage our existence, we create a tantalizing breadcrumb trail for marketers to follow. Couple that with the phenomenon of mass-scale exhibitionism we like to call Facebook and Twitter, and a company with enough resources can get to know us pretty well.

The burgeoning practice of behavioral marketing allows them to deliver the right advertisement to the right person at the right instant with increasing precision.

As innovation advances, one can only expect this highly targeted form of advertising to get more and more efficient. Unless Congress decides to smother this promising prodigy in its crib.

Groups such as the aforementioned Center for Digital Democracy have been bending legislators' ears and, as a recent Congressional Research Service report notes, the legislators are listening:

Representative Rick Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommitee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, has announced plans to introduce legislation setting tighter standards for online privacy, which could limit some forms of targeted advertising.

I'd like to use this platform to send Congressman Boucher a polite message of my own, "Thanks for thinking of me, but please butt the heck out."

There are few things that bother me more than wildly untargeted advertising. Whenever I check my email or hit a Web site lately, I am confronted with accusations that my abs are too flabby, my teeth too yellow, my credit rating too poor and my, well, you know, is too flaccid. Admittedly, three out of four of those are lucky good guesses.