Online data brokers: ‘What they can buy is pretty troubling’
Data brokers are part of a multibillion-dollar industry that encompasses everyone from credit reporting companies to these weird people-finding websites whenever you Google the name of your friend’s sketchy new boyfriend.
The main tools are cookies, which enable websites to remember you and have evolved to include third-party cookies, which track where else you are going on the internet. The process takes breadcrumbs of where we have gone and what we have done online, and packages it to share with marketing firms. Users are then sorted into groups, such as couples with clout, ambitious singles, boomers and boomerangs and kids and cabernet.
Full article: John Oliver on online data brokers: ‘What they can buy is pretty troubling’ | John Oliver | The Guardian
