Right, the pervasivenes today is much higher. But marketers/advertisers have always hoovered up and exploited as much information as was technically possible. That attitude isn't new.

Another thing that is absolutely new is the vast number of people using this data for things other than ads/marketing. The data on registration cards was never used to decide if you get a job or not, or how much you pay for a hotel room vs the next person, or how long you wait on hold when you call a customer service line, or how much your insurance rates go up, or whether or not you're a suspect in a criminal investigation, or if you get custody of your child in a divorce proceeding. The amount of things our data ends up being used for is on a scale that simply was not possible when people started filling out product registration forms.

For better or worse, those use cases are at least somewhat legitimate. Marketing is purely malicious.