The Privacy Podcast with Fexingo: Data Protection, GDPR, and Digital Privacy Rights

Episode 29 of The Privacy Podcast with Fexingo uncovers how modern vehicles collect and share vast amounts of personal data. Hosts Lucas and Luna reveal that the average connected car generates up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour — including location, driving habits, biometrics, and even in-cabin audio. They discuss a 2025 Mozilla investigation that rated all major car brands as 'privacy nightmare...

Lucas and Luna uncover how smart TVs use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to listen to what you're watching and feed that data into ad-targeting systems. They walk through the specific case of Vizio's Inscape division, which collects viewing data from millions of TVs and sells aggregated insights to advertisers and media companies. The conversation covers how ACR works technically, why the 2019...

Lucas and Luna investigate the shadowy market for prescription data. When you fill a prescription at the pharmacy, your medication name, dosage, and doctor's details are sold to data brokers who then package and resell that information to pharmaceutical companies, insurers, and even employers. Lucas reveals that one major broker, IQVIA, processes over 150 billion prescription transactions annually...

Episode 26 of The Privacy Podcast digs into a hidden data flow: how hospitals and health systems sell patient data to data brokers and advertisers. Lucas and Luna walk through the legal loophole — HIPAA's de-identification standard — and how a 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation found that 94 percent of US hospitals share data with third parties including Facebook and Google. They examine the r...

Lucas and Luna uncover the surprising ways mobile carriers share your real-time location data with third parties, often without explicit consent. They examine a 2024 investigation by a US senator that revealed how a single data broker accessed location records from over 100 million phones, and what this means for your privacy rights. The hosts break down the legal loopholes that allow this data sh...

Browser fingerprinting is quietly becoming the dominant tracking method in a post-cookie world. Lucas and Luna break down how it works, why it's harder to block than cookies, and what a recent study from Carnegie Mellon reveals about the persistence of fingerprints across sessions. They discuss the legal gray zone under GDPR, why the ePrivacy directive hasn't kept up, and practical steps to reduce...

In this episode of The Privacy Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the controversial practice of AI data scraping. They break down how companies like OpenAI and Google collect vast amounts of personal data from the web without consent, what the legal gray areas are, and how a recent class-action lawsuit against an AI startup is shaping future regulations. Specific focus on the case of a photographer w...

Episode 22 of The Privacy Podcast with Fexingo digs into a quietly legal data practice that affects nearly every smartphone user: carrier location sharing. Lucas and Luna walk through how your phone automatically sends location data to your wireless carrier every time you connect to a tower, and how carriers legally sell that data to third-party brokers — often without explicit consent. They use t...

Ever bought a used phone from eBay or a refurbisher? Lucas and Luna investigate a growing privacy and legal risk: the personal data that remains on secondhand smartphones even after a 'factory reset.' They walk through a 2025 study by a German research lab that purchased 50 used devices and recovered financial records, login credentials, and biometric data from 38 of them. They discuss the liabili...

In this episode of The Privacy Podcast, hosts Lucas and Luna dive into the growing use of AI-powered monitoring tools in the workplace. They focus on a specific case: a mid-sized tech company that deployed an AI system to track employee productivity by analyzing keystrokes, mouse movements, and even tone of voice in internal communications. Lucas explains how such tools can go beyond simple metric...

Episode 19 of The Privacy Podcast with Fexingo examines the data privacy risks of employer-mandated wellness apps. Lucas and Luna break down a real case: a large retailer that required employees to use a step-tracking app for insurance discounts, then shared anonymized data with third-party researchers—leading to re-identification of individuals. They explore how wellness apps collect health, loca...

Episode 18 of The Privacy Podcast with Fexingo examines why the very tool millions use to protect their privacy — the VPN — can sometimes make things worse. Lucas and Luna unpack the 2024 Stanford study that found 68 percent of VPN apps on Google Play leak DNS queries, the risk of VPNs run by data-hungry parent companies, and why free VPNs are almost always the real product. They walk through the...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the growing tension between workplace productivity monitoring and employee privacy rights. They focus on a specific 2025 case: a mid-sized logistics firm in Germany that was fined 2.3 million euros under GDPR for using keystroke logging software without proper consent. The hosts break down how the company's 'productivity score' system ran afoul of data minim...

Episode 16 of The Privacy Podcast dives into browser fingerprinting: the tracking technique that works even after you clear cookies and enable Do Not Track. Lucas and Luna explain how sites combine data like screen resolution, installed fonts, and GPU model to create a unique identifier — often without your knowledge. They cite a 2025 study from KU Leuven that found 94% of the top 10,000 websites...

This episode of The Privacy Podcast looks at an overlooked data-collection vector: public USB charging stations. Lucas and Luna discuss how 'juice jacking' attacks work, why the data harvested from a charging session can be worth more than the phone itself, and the surprising lack of regulation around them. They cite a 2023 study by a cybersecurity firm that found over 30% of airport charging stat...

Lucas and Luna dig into the growing legal pushback against biometric time clocks used by employers and landlords. They focus on a 2025 federal lawsuit against a major property management firm for using facial recognition on tenants, and a separate case involving a warehouse giant that scanned employees' palm prints without consent. They break down how Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (B...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA are forcing companies to elevate privacy oversight to the boardroom level. They discuss the rise of the Chief Privacy Officer role, why boards are now forming dedicated privacy committees, and the concrete risks directors face if they neglect data governance. Drawing on recent examples—including a major Europea...

In this episode of The Privacy Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore a hidden threat to your personal data: third-party software libraries embedded in websites and apps. They dissect the 2024 breach of a popular analytics script called 'TrackMe' that compromised thousands of sites simultaneously, and explain why 'supply chain privacy' is the next frontier for regulators. Using the analogy of a building'...

Lucas and Luna explore a growing trend: employers using third-party data brokers to assess job candidates before and during employment. They break down how companies like Checkr, Sterling, and GoodHire provide background checks that go far beyond criminal records - pulling social media history, purchasing data, and even location patterns. The episode focuses on a 2025 lawsuit against a major retai...

Lucas and Luna explore the often-overlooked privacy implications of smart home assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. They discuss how voice recordings are stored, who has access to them, and what happens when law enforcement requests data. The episode examines a specific case from 2024 where a murder conviction relied on Amazon Echo data, and explains the legal gray area around third-...

Episode 9 of The Privacy Podcast. Lucas and Luna unpack the data valuation gap: how companies estimate the dollar value of user data, why the average person's privacy is worth about 65 cents a year to advertisers, and what happens when a data subject demands compensation. Featuring the real case of Oliver, a German data-rights activist who sued for 50,000 euros—and won 100. The hosts explore a 202...

Episode 8 of The Privacy Podcast examines the real-world cost of data subject access requests for small businesses. Lucas and Luna drill into a recent study from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office showing that SMEs spend an average of $2,800 per request, compared to $120 for large firms. They discuss why the GDPR's Article 15 creates a compliance burden that scales inversely with company s...

The European Union is finalizing a sweeping AI Liability Directive that could fundamentally reshape how companies are held accountable when an artificial intelligence system harms someone. But the draft text contains a clause that privacy and tech policy experts are calling the 'black box defense' — a provision that would let companies escape liability if they can prove they followed transparency...

Episode 6 of The Privacy Podcast digs into the death of third-party cookies and the emerging alternatives reshaping digital advertising. Lucas and Luna examine Google's Privacy Sandbox, the rise of contextual targeting, and the trade-offs between privacy and personalization. They discuss how companies like The Trade Desk are building identity solutions, why publishers are pushing first-party data...

Lucas and Luna explore the little-known data broker exception in U.S. privacy law. Most Americans assume GDPR-style protections apply, but a gap allows companies like Acxiom and Epsilon to sell location and browsing data without consent. The hosts unpack a 2025 FTC report showing how brokers collect 4,000+ data points per person, the California Privacy Rights Act's partial fix, and why your phone'...