Monday, the Federal Trade Commission held a conference to discuss guidelines on how companies collect and store vast amounts of data about consumers for very little money to use it for advertising.

 As FTC reported, there are little in the way of legal requirements to protect consumer information.

 Chairman Jon Leibowitz, supporting rules requiring consumers to "opt in" before any information on them can be collected, noted the ever-lower cost of collecting and storing all sorts of information. He also marked questions about certain types of information, including medical and financial.

 The chairman rejected to outline what the agency planned in terms of additional guidelines. Previously, Leibowitz said that industry's failure to safeguard the public's privacy could lead to federal legislation.

 Google's public policy director, Alan Davidson, noted how unprecedented some data collection is, including where a consumer may be at any given time. "It's one of the reasons that we really have to get this right," he said. "It's a very dynamic environment. We have to be careful."

 Privacy advocates leveraged for tougher regulations on large phone and Internet companies, like AT&T Inc and Google, outlining they have excessive access to and control over consumers' personal information.

 Currently there are few US laws about the collection and use of consumer data, with exceptions for instances where companies fail to live up to promises to protect privacy, or fail to deliver an expected level of data protection.