Erasing Your Online Data

Data brokers are amassing tons of our personal information, often from public sources. You can try to find all of these brokers and request your data be deleted, but it’s a lot easier to deputize a trustworthy and affordable service to do all that work for you – and to do so on a regular basis. I’ll give you my easy button solution for this. Also in the news: Meta will use your AI sessions to target ads; Google is rolling out agentic AI shopping tools; OpenTable is gathering and sharing your dining habits; Amazon sues Perplexity over their agentic shopping tool; first ever reported AI-orchestrated hacking campaign; EU Commission looks to gut privacy laws; lawmakers want to ban all VPN use; US Senator uses opponents’ can VIN info against them; and new health privacy bill seeks to protect data in apps, smart watches. Article Links Meta won’t allow users to opt out of targeted ads based on AI chats https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/meta-wont-allow-users-to-opt-out-of-targeted-ads-based-on-ai-chats/ Google Is Rolling Out ‘Agentic Checkout’ to Make Your Purchases for You https://lifehacker.com/tech/google-is-rolling-out-agentic-checkout Texas Server Says Your Waitstaff Can Now See What Type Of Customer You Are If You Use OpenTable https://brobible.com/culture/article/opentable-ai-customer-profiling/ Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/perplexity-receives-legal-threat-amazon-over-agentic-ai-shopping-tool-2025-11-04/ Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign https://www.anthropic.com/news/disrupting-AI-espionage Civil society decries digital rights ‘rollback’ as European Commission pushes data protection changes https://therecord.media/civil-society-privacy-rollback Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawmakers-want-ban-vpns-and-they-have-no-idea-what-theyre-doing Senate Democrats seek to ‘get to bottom’ of Moreno’s car-data collection https://rollcall.com/2025/11/06/senate-democrats-seek-to-get-to-bottom-of-morenos-car-data-collection/ Health privacy bill seeks protections for data collected by apps, smartwatches https://therecord.media/health-privacy-bill-seeks-protections-apps-smartwatches Tip of the Week: Erasing Your Data: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/dragon-hacks-opt-out/  Further Info Ask ARC to delete data and stop sharing: https://www.404media.co/how-to-opt-out-of-airlines-selling-your-travel-data-to-the-government/  My book: https://fdsd.me/book  My newsletter: https://fdsd.me/newsletter  Support our mission! https://fdsd.me/support  Give the gift of privacy and security: https://fdsd.me/coupons  Get your Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons Merch! https://fdsd.me/merch  Table of Contents 0:00:07: Intro 0:00:45: News briefs 0:02:57: News preview 0:05:38: Meta won’t let you opt out of AI data gathering 0:15:05: Google Is Rolling Out ‘Agentic Checkout’ 0:20:13: OpenTable gathering and sharing your dining info 0:31:22: Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool 0:38:57: First reported AI-orchestrated cyber attack 0:51:33: European Commission pushes data protection changes 0:55:15: Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs 1:04:03: Senator uses VIN info against opponents 1:10:38: Health privacy bill seeks protections for data collected by apps, smartwatches 1:12:43: Tip of the Week 1:16:26: Looking ahead