A new consumer advocacy group is launching to help form the standards for online data collection and privacy. The Future of Privacy Forum, as the group is called, wants to give consumers more control over how their personal information is gathered and used for targeted advertising.

Led by Jules Polonetsky, the former head of AOL's privacy policy, the group will work with the government on privacy issues and may soon advocate for consumers to opt into all tracking processes, rather than opt out, according to the Washington Post.

With the down economy, marketers want their ads to have the largest possible impact, but this could come at the expense of consumers' privacy, according to the Forum.

"[A]dvertisers are looking increasingly more to data to decide which marketing campaigns will be cut and which will survive," said Polonetsky. "There's a rush to make deeper decisions that will impact privacy."

The Future of Privacy Forum's launch comes shortly after a class-action lawsuit was filed against six internet service providers, a case that could shape the course of behavioral targeting for years to come.