Comedian John Oliver Takes Jab At Greenwich In Weekly HBO Show

GREENWICH, CT — Earlier this week on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver," comedian John Oliver delved into the topic of data brokers, and how they're obtaining and using personal information from the general public.

In doing so, he took a swipe at Greenwich during the 25-minute segment.

First, Oliver outlined what data brokers actually do.

"We have all found ourselves being targeted by ads for something oddly specific and thought, 'How on earth did they know to show me that?'" Oliver said, explaining that obtaining and selling personal data is a multi-billion dollar industry, spanning credit reporting companies to "weird people-finding websites that pop up whenever you google the name of your friend's sketchy new boyfriend," to companies no one has even heard of.

"What all these companies have in common is they collect your personal information and resell or share it with others," Oliver said. "Data brokers operate in a sprawling, unregulated ecosystem which can get very creepy, very fast... The truth is, when it comes to data brokers, they know significantly more about you than you might like, and do significantly more with it than you might think."

Every interaction, especially on the internet, leaves behind breadcrumbs of personal information that can be gathered and sold, thanks in large part to cookies, which allow websites to remember users, Oliver said.

Data brokers often take all of these breadcrumbs and pair them with other data they can obtain about an individual, and share it with businesses who want to target customers.

Oliver noted that several years ago, CBS bought location data from certain brokers, and it didn't take much for them to find out who the data belonged to, where they lived and what they were doing.

CBS said one particular set of data showed a cell phone pinging inside a $7 million mansion in Greenwich. That person then visited a country club before heading downtown and returning home.

"That particular example is not that surprising to me," Oliver quipped. "If you told me an individual woke up in a $7 million mansion in Greenwich, CT, and made me guess where they went next, I would go with, I don't know, um, a country club, downtown to hunt humans for sport and then home again, and I'd have been pretty sure I was right."

Oliver then went on to say this kind of identifying information can "cause huge problems."

He referenced a 2021 story in which a priest was forced to resign after a Catholic newsletter said it used cell phone data to link the priest to the gay dating app, Grindr. Oliver called it a "massive, harmful invasion of privacy."

Individual states have tried to limit data brokers, but Oliver said advocates want comprehensive federal privacy laws governing them.

But no substantial action has been taken, notably because politicians build their campaigns on data obtained from brokers, Oliver said.

"It is very frustrating that the people who could do something about data brokers are so actively incentivised not to," he said.

To view the entire 25-minute segment from the show, click here.