How Data Brokers Score Your Political Leaning

Lucas and Luna unpack the shadowy industry of political data scoring — how data brokers like Acxiom and LiveRamp assign political affiliation scores to nearly every US adult, often without consent. They trace how voter file data gets merged with consumer purchase history, social media activity, and even magazine subscriptions to build predictive models used by campaigns, advocacy groups, and sometimes employers. Specific examples include how buying a gun magazine might tag you as 'conservative' or donating to Planned Parenthood tags you as 'liberal' — and how these scores can stick even if you change your views. They also discuss the 2024 Federal Trade Commission complaint against Mobilewalla for scraping location data to infer political and religious affiliations, and the lack of federal privacy law regulating this practice. The episode closes with practical steps listeners can take to opt out of major data broker political scoring lists. #DataBrokers #PoliticalScoring #Acxiom #LiveRamp #Mobilewalla #FTC #PrivacyRights #VoterData #ConsumerPrivacy #PoliticalAdvertising #DataPrivacy #Technology #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Podcast #DataProtection #GDPR #DigitalRights Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo