John Oliver proves how easy it is to buy people’s data, does it to D.C. politicians

Think your data is relatively safe while you’re browsing the internet? Think again!

As John Oliver breaks down during the latest Last Week Tonight episode, pretty much everything we do online is being tracked by somebody, with data brokers constantly making money collating our cookie-acquired data, bundling it up into neat little packages and selling it on to third parties.

“We’ve got shady data brokers with virtually no oversight collecting your data and building profiles that can track who you are, where you are, and what you are most likely to do or buy, you cannot edit this dossier, and others from cops to reporters to your own abusers can find and use this information,” says Oliver. “It’s not a great situation.

“So, what do we do? Well it is a bit tricky, especially given that the entire economy of the internet right now is basically built on this practice. All the free stuff that you take for granted online is only free because you are the product. They make money by selling your data.”

Stick around for the end of the video, in which Oliver proves just how easy it is to buy information about people online — by running his own data-harvesting experiment on the politicians in Washington D.C.

If you’re worried, meanwhile, there are some steps you can take to protect your privacy online. Here are seven quick ways to improve your privacy in 2022, here’s how to stop your cell provider sharing some of your data, and here are some other suggestions for privacy safeguards you can take.