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Quote:Two consumer advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying Microsoft Corp. and other Web-based companies are using "unfair and deceptive" business practices to collect data about their customers.

The complaint by The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed Wednesday, asks the FTC to investigate Microsoft's use of customer data collection in its Web advertising service, called adCenter. The adCenter service targets customers with contextual advertising based on their Web habits.

But CDD and US PIRG said Microsoft's tracking of Web user habits goes too far. "Microsoft has embarked on a wide-ranging data collection and targeting scheme that is deceptive and unfair to millions of users," the groups said in their complaint to the FTC...