James Oliver

1162 Words3 Pages

James Oliver on Last Week Tonight covers the pressing issue of data brokers and information privacy, or rather, lack thereof. He defines data brokers as a “multi-billion dollar industry. [that] collect[s] your personal information and then resell[s] it or share[s] it with others.” Data brokers use this information, not only to create targeted advertisements but also to track personal demographics, locations, interests– pretty much anything you put into your technological devices. He gives multiple real-life examples of the impact data brokers have on people’s lives and just how much private information they collect on people. One is Life360, collecting people’s information. The scandal resulted in Life360 claiming that all users’ data was “de-identified” …show more content…

adults don’t believe their data can be collected daily. Data brokers use different manipulative tactics to get away with this. For one, cookies seem like a harmless pop-up. They show up on almost every website you try to access, and most people just click accept without realizing it, or websites make it hard to not accept all cookies. This is an example of a dark pattern in user experience design. Data brokers use user experience design principles and psychology to manipulate users to hand over their data to data brokers without the users realizing …show more content…

Older people may not completely understand and realize that certain advertisements or links are scams and are just ways data brokers collect information. Toward the end of the video, James Oliver made a joke that he used data brokers to “fish” for members of Congress and set specific demographics, including age and location, to find who would click on the links. Another example of using age would be my dad’s lack of knowledge of scam links. Before he got a new phone, his old phone would get ads even when he was just on the home screen. This was because he would either click links he thought were not scams, or he was unable to exit out of an advertisement because it used dark patterns, making it hard to exit out. My dad, not knowing any better, thought that this was normal for his phone to have ads and did not do anything to remove the viruses on his phone. Data brokers are smart and methodical. Using age as a way to target users for data is interesting and clever, however, dangerous for older

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