John Oliver: Data Broker

The HBO program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver covers a wide range of topics. Some are deadly serious while others are quite lighthearted. But regardless of what he talks about every Sunday evening, it's thorough and interesting. This past Sunday he took a stab at data collection and privacy, something I'm actually bringing to you on Thursday's edition of The Longform. So there is no better time to bring this to you.

Oliver and his team go into data privacy in this long video. Many of the ideas are ones we've heard many times such as "if the thing you're using is free, YOU are the product" and how everything we do is tracked. There is a litany of examples of how we are tracked, from browser cookies, location data, apps collecting data they shouldn't, and the lack of regulation around any of this.

I'll save the funny and interesting twist that Oliver always brings to the end of his pieces, but let's just say that he has a very tempting offer for congresspeople to act on data protection.