{"id":93517,"date":"2022-04-12T10:04:59","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T04:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/last-week-tonight-host-john-oliver-just-blackmailed-congress\/"},"modified":"2022-04-12T10:04:59","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T04:34:59","slug":"last-week-tonight-host-john-oliver-just-blackmailed-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/last-week-tonight-host-john-oliver-just-blackmailed-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Week Tonight host John Oliver just blackmailed Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Companies playing fast and loose with user data online is certainly not a new phenomenon, but one whose practitioners continue to get more egregious and brazen over time, it seems. Google banned dozens of apps from the Google Play Store in recent days, for example, after discovering that they were secretly harvesting data. On Sunday\u2019s episode of John Oliver\u2019s HBO show Last Week Tonight<\/em>, meanwhile, he attacked a different aspect of the same problem: Data brokers.<\/p>\n

The short version: You know those shady companies that buy up your digital data, then turn around and sell it to other parties? Well, that\u2019s what Oliver\u2019s segment focused on. But check out what he did.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour privacy should be the default setting here\u201d<\/h2>\n

This time, Oliver and his staff became the buyer in the aforementioned scenario. They bought data on individuals with specific traits that US congressmen would have. They also had a digital footprint within five miles of the Capitol building. So, a fishing expedition, in other words.<\/p>\n

However, Oliver & Co. apparently did catch something. Per our sister publication Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a>, the host was coy about what they found. But it seems they were able to not only identify more than one specific lawmaker from the data obtained. They also got their hands on \u201cpotentially problematic search histories.\u201d Making this all even more eyebrow-raising, Oliver kind of, sort of, seemed to blackmail Congress by suggesting that they really ought to pass a law making this kind of thing illegal.<\/p>\n

Otherwise \u2014 oops, right?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire economy of the internet right now is basically built on this practice,\u201d Oliver told viewers. \u201cAll the free stuff that you take for granted online is only free because you are the product.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to direct iPhone users to head to their privacy menu and look for the tracking setting. Then, turn off the allowance of apps requesting to track you. But that shouldn\u2019t be on you, he continued. \u201cYour privacy should be the default setting here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver<\/em> Season 9<\/h2>\n

Apple originally introduced the App Tracking Transparency feature, which companies like Peloton and Meta have blamed for huge losses, in iOS 14.5. The point of the system is to allow consumers to decide when and how much an app can track their usage across other applications.<\/p>\n

Last Week Tonight<\/em>, meanwhile, returned for its ninth season on Sunday, February 20. It airs from 11-11:30 pm ET on HBO, and it\u2019s available to stream on HBO Max.<\/p>\n

The series has received 23 Emmys since premiering in 2014. Last year, according to WarnerMedia, \u201cthe series won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Talk Series as well as Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, both for the sixth year in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n

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More HBO coverage:<\/strong>\u00a0For more Netflix news, check out our coverage of the latest\u00a0new HBO movies and series to watch.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Companies playing fast and loose with user data online is certainly not a new phenomenon, but one whose practitioners continue to get more egregious and brazen over time, it seems. Google banned dozens of apps from the Google Play Store in recent days, for example, after discovering that they were secretly harvesting data. On Sunday\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":93518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,3,105,106],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Last-Week-Tonight-host-John-Oliver-just-blackmailed-Congress.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}