{"id":209162,"date":"2022-04-18T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=209162"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:06:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:06:45","slug":"it-can-get-very-creepy-very-fast-john-oliver-exposes-multimillion-dollar-data-brokering-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/04\/it-can-get-very-creepy-very-fast-john-oliver-exposes-multimillion-dollar-data-brokering-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It Can Get Very Creepy Very Fast:\u2019 John Oliver Exposes Multimillion-Dollar Data Brokering Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Data brokers know more about you than you might like \u2014 and do more with what they know than you might think, warned comedian John Oliver on HBO\u2019s \u201cLast Week Tonight With John Oliver.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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11 Apr 2022 – <\/em>On Sunday\u2019s [10 Apr] episode of HBO\u2019s \u201cLast Week Tonight With John Oliver,\u201d Oliver exposed how data brokers get our personal information \u2014 and what they do with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about the convenience and\/or irritation of targeted ads,\u201d Oliver said. \u201cData brokers operate in a sprawling unregulated ecosystem<\/a> which can get very creepy very fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data brokering is the multimillion-dollar industry of collecting personal information and then reselling or sharing it with marketers and others.<\/p>\n

As one expert puts it, data brokers are \u201cthe middlemen of surveillance capitalism,\u201d Oliver said.<\/p>\n

\u201cData brokers \u2026\u00a0 know significantly more about you than you might like and do significantly more with it than you might think,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Oliver shared an instance of a man receiving a mailing from OfficeMax that had the words \u201cdaughter killed in car crash\u201d in the address line.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would they have that kind of information?\u201d asked the man. \u201cWhy would they need that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Oliver cautioned, \u201cBasically every time you interact with society, you are leaving little breadcrumbs that can be gathered together and sold, and much of this happens online.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data collection happens through the use of cookies<\/a>, Oliver explained, which in the early days of the internet were simply a way for websites to remember their visitors.<\/p>\n

But cookies now involve third-party companies planting a piece of code in your browser that allows them to track your activity on the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know about you,\u201d Oliver said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t want a whole crowd of strangers watching what I search for on the internet. Not because it\u2019s gross \u2014 because it\u2019s private. Private doesn\u2019t have to mean gross.\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies can compile lists of people with certain medical conditions or sexual preferences within certain zip codes and sell the lists to marketers, he explained.<\/p>\n

While medical information you tell your doctor is protected by law, searches you perform online are not. \u201cIt\u2019s a system that seems ripe for abuse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Although data brokers often claim to \u201cde-identify\u201d data before selling it, it is very easy to find out who is behind a number or a code, he said.<\/p>\n

A 2019 study<\/a> published in Nature found 99% of Americans could be correctly re-identified in any data set using just 15 demographic attributes, among them age, sex and marital status.<\/p>\n

A 2020 article<\/a> in Vice found the app Muslim Pro, which reminds Muslims to pray, had been selling user location data to a broker that supplied information to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

To throw data brokers off your trail, Oliver suggested:<\/p>\n