Lock and Code

Lock and Code

Malwarebytes

Lock and Code tells the human stories within cybersecurity, privacy, and technology. Rogue robot vacuums, hacked farm tractors, and catastrophic software vulnerabilities—it’s all here.

Categories: Technology

Listen to the last episode:

On the internet, you can be shown an online ad because of your age, your address, your purchase history, your politics, your religion, and even your likelihood of having cancer.

This is because of the largely unchecked “data broker” industry.

Data brokers are analytics and marketing companies that collect every conceivable data point that exists about you, packaging it all into profiles that other companies use when deciding who should see their advertisements.

Have a new mortgage? There are data brokers that collect that information and then sell it to advertisers who believe new homeowners are the perfect demographic to purchase, say, furniture, dining sets, or other home goods. Bought a new car? There are data brokers that collect all sorts of driving information directly from car manufacturers—including the direction you’re driving, your car’s gas tank status, its speed, and its location—because some unknown data model said somewhere that, perhaps, car drivers in certain states who are prone to speeding might be more likely to buy one type of product compared to another.

This is just a glimpse of what is happening to essentially every single adult who uses the Internet today.

So much of the information that people would never divulge to a stranger—like their addresses, phone numbers, criminal records, and mortgage payments—is collected away from view by thousands of data brokers. And while these companies know so much about people, the public at large likely know very little in return.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel with the ACLU, about how data brokers collect their information, what data points are off-limits (if any), and how people can protect their sensitive information, along with the harms that come from unchecked data broker activity—beyond just targeted advertising.

“We’re seeing data that’s been purchased from data brokers used to make decisions about who gets a house, who gets an employment opportunity, who is offered credit, who is considered for admission into a university.”

Tune in today.

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For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

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Previous episodes

  • 119 - This industry profits from knowing you have cancer, explains Cody Venzke 
    Sun, 20 Oct 2024 - 0h
  • 118 - Exposing the Facebook funeral livestream scam 
    Sun, 06 Oct 2024 - 0h
  • 117 - San Francisco’s fight against deepfake porn, with City Attorney David Chiu 
    Sun, 22 Sep 2024 - 0h
  • 116 - What the arrest of Telegram's CEO means, with Eva Galperin 
    Sun, 08 Sep 2024 - 0h
  • 115 - Move over malware: Why one teen is more worried about AI (re-air) 
    Sun, 25 Aug 2024 - 0h
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