and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission staff report on nine tech companies confirms., YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020.
The FTC is also asking that the companies mentioned in the report invest in “limiting data retention and sharing, restricting targeted advertising, and strengthening protections for teens”. Several firms say it’s impossible to even compile a full list of who they share your data with. When the companies were asked to enumerate which advertisers, data brokers or other entities they shared consumer data with, none of these nine firms provided the FTC with a full inventory.
“That is the most basic requirement,” said Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The fact that some weren’t doing that even in the face of state privacy laws that require it proves that stronger enforcement is needed, especially from consumers themselves.”