How aggressive should you be in gathering consumer information online?

In general I'm somewhat paranoid about giving out any sort of personal information out on the web.  I hate having my email spammed and that includes getting "valuable offer" emails from a company's partners.

Contests, minimal discounts, newsletter overload, and irrelevant products all get marked as junk mail rather than wasting more of my time visiting the site and filling out more forms to be taken off their mailing list.

In general I fill in fake information to access the information/features/promotions that I want from an unfamiliar site. If they send information only to a valid email address I'll create a tempory one to leave in the dust once I get what I wanted.

The exception to this would be services I see as legit or necessary.  Online banking for instance- very useful.  Another would be ordering something online; there's no point in entering a fake shipping address or a fake name because you'd want to recieve what you just paid for.

In the example they only asked for an age verification before they open the door and for alcohol this makes sense.  It's much less clunky than trying to access something like BudTV.  If I have to fill out a form before I know they have something good, I won't take the time to find out. 

It's the web- give me what I want, when I want, how I want it.  If you don't- bye.  Ruthless.

Name and email is about all I have the patience for. You can have other stuff on the form, but if it's not optional, I'm gone. I may give more for information, whitepapers, or training I'm interested in. Most other gifts or free stuff I'll skip because it's almost always junk. In regards to the wine site above, I'm gone. I don't have time to be led by the hand through a series of pretty screens. Give me one form with everything optional except my email and take me to the information. But that's just me and I'm wierd.