Episode Details

Data brokering feels like a conspiracy theory, but it's actually a highly efficient market. In this episode, we trace the journey of your personal information — from app permissions and loyalty cards to probabilistic matching engines and real-time bidding exchanges. We break down how hundreds of firms you've never heard of stitch together harmless fragments into sensitive profiles, why "we don't sell your data" is technically true but practically meaningless, and what actually happens in the 100 milliseconds between loading a webpage and seeing an ad. If you've ever wondered who buys your data and how the transaction works, this episode pulls back the curtain.