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Data Brokers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
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View Reddit by BoogsterSU2 – View Source
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Data Brokers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
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View Reddit by BoogsterSU2 – View Source
To all the John Oliver haters here: If you hate this segment, you are aligning yourself to the data broker industry!
Insert obligatory PSA about Ublock Origin for browser based ad-blocking, and especially [Pi-Hole for ad-blocking on all devices](https://pi-hole.net) on a wifi network.
Combine it with the [PiVPN](https://www.pivpn.io), and you can have ad-blocking and privacy capabilities when also outside the home. It’s especially useful if you want to connect to a public wifi or something and don’t want to worry about anyone monitoring your internet traffic or anything like that.
For instance, [~25% of my traffic queries are ad, analytical, or tracking in some form](https://i.imgur.com/cVv71Vq.jpg).
[Here’s a useful article with direct links and info on how to opt-out from the major data broker sites.](https://privacybee.com/blog/how-to-remove-yourself-from-data-broker-sites/)
[Here’s a mega-list of opt-out links for data brokers and all sorts of databases!](https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html) I spent the past hour opting out of more databases and services I didn’t know existed until now…
The CCPA for Californians makes opting out much, much easier on many sites, but it’s often semi-hidden and/or a seperate link.
Edit: [Here’s another list and guide with opt-out links and which opt-outs are high priority.](https://github.com/yaelwrites/Big-Ass-Data-Broker-Opt-Out-List)
He should have dropped just a few names of politicians he got some info on, without dropping any details.
That way he could have created some real pressure. Because as of right now, I suppose most of them would just be like “ain’t me, don’t care”, thus nothing would change at all.
A reminder to any major tech companies who might be reading this that *strong privacy laws are good for big tech*. They help reinforce your strong market position as data collectors and prevent third-parties from providing people with the raw data that you don’t want to share. They also hinder start-ups from growing to compete with you because they’re not going to get to exploit data the same way you could while you were growing. So get out there and lobby for better privacy laws.
Fantastic episode. The ending was great and I do hope that we’ll get a follow-up on that in a few months.
Sometimes i feel like John is a time traveler, sent from the future with all this knowledge to save us from ourselves
I liked the attempt to put the Fear in congress but it also didn’t feel like enough.
We play ‘guess who googled it’ in the office … anytime one of us starts getting adverts for something unusual, we try and work out who in the office it was searching for it.
But you can also use this at home to work out what birthday/Christmas presents your other half has been searching/ordering for you. My wife thinks I have some sort of superpower 🦸♂️
This is a great episode. One of his best ever.
But I wish he would have spent a little more time on what you can do to protect yourself. If people actually do care, then why don’t they take some personal responsibility and stop it? Yes it’s sad we need to do this at all, but it’s kind of like walking through the bad part of town wearing gold and be shocked that you got mugged. Installing uBlock Origin, as a start, is not hard at all, and would actually be a meaningful change instead of hollow words.