This article from the Engadget web magazine discusses how your online searching behaviors might be monitored by different companies that you are unaware about. This data is likely used to build profiles that may impact the advertisements you see, credit ratings received, and other potential social network aspects as of yet identified. 

From the Ranked Health website: 

RANKED Health is a project run by the Hacking Medicine Institute (HMi), a non-profit organization spun out of MIT’s Hacking Medicine program. This project is designed to review and rank healthcare focused applications, providing independent, unbiased and accurate information to accelerate patient and provider adoption of clinically proven and high-quality digital health solutions. In addition to identifying best-in-class healthcare applications for better health monitoring and disease management, RANKED Health also helps uncover unsafe and ineffective apps on the market.

From the Federal Trade Commission website:

If you have a smart phone or other mobile device, you probably use apps – to play games, get turn-by-turn directions, access news, books, weather, and more. Easy to download and often free, mobile apps can be so much fun and so convenient that you might download them without thinking about some key considerations: how they’re paid for, what information they may gather from your device, or who gets that information.