Why Every "Privacy" App Eventually Sells Your Data

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Open your phone right now and look at your messaging apps. WhatsApp, Discord, maybe Telegram. They all have one thing in common. Every single one of them promised you something when you signed up. Privacy.

[00:00:11]>> But data brokers are buying and selling details about our habits and preferences.

[00:00:15]>> Selling it has become a big business.

[00:00:17]>> I think everyone should have control over how their information is used.

[00:00:20]>> If you've been paying attention, you watch every one of those promises quietly disappear. Ads where there used to be none. Terms that changed overnight. Come on. Who has time to read any of this? And besides, your entire life is already on there. So, you did what any reasonable person does and stayed, which is exactly what they were counting on. There's a reason we don't sell your data is now the most profitable sentence in the history of the internet. Not because they were actively lying, but because the truth was only useful until the moment you couldn't leave. And what I found looking through some of the biggest apps that ever marketed themselves on privacy is that they all broke the promise at the exact same moment. So, I'll break down the playbook, show you who's next, and reveal the deeper reason why privacy might be the one promise no company, no matter how committed, can no longer keep.

[00:01:08]>> People are very upset that their data is not theirs anymore.

[00:01:12]>> Can legally sell that information without your permission.

[00:01:14]>> If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold.

[00:01:28]So to understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand what you're actually worth to these companies beyond what's already obvious. And the best way to show you is if I become one.

[00:01:38]So let's say I'm the CEO of a brand new free messaging app called Genap. And you watching just signed up and slowly but surely you start running your entire life there. You start using it every day to communicate with your friends, group chats, family, and it's a huge hit because why wouldn't it be? It's free, so you're not really paying for anything. Except, of course, now every message you send tells Genap who you're talking to. And every group you join tells me what you're interested in. And just like that, your phone number becomes like a social security number that identifies you. Your location data tells me where you live, where you work, where you shop. And just like that, I already extracted a lot of data from you. But hold on, you probably already know all this. Gab, Google, they all know about your nasty search history.

[00:02:26]But here's what most of you watching may not know because now with all this data, we're at a point that GAP can now figure out things about you that you haven't even figured out yourself. And you'd be surprised to hear that it's been in the works for years. A decade ago, Target built a system that could predict whether a customer was pregnant based on their shopping patterns alone, based on if they're buying a specific lotion or certain vitamins. They've been able to develop a system that gives every single one of you watching or shopping there a prediction score. But that was all the way back in 2012. Now, imagine what I could do with all this data that I have on you in that little device that you carry 24/7. Like that girl that you text every night at the same time. Yeah, I know about her. That's your girlfriend Stacy. I don't think texting good night every night at 10 p.m. with no replies is going to change anything. But anyways, that's basic predictions. Where I really make the money now is when your location data shows that you've been visiting a car dealership on weekends.

[00:03:20]And now that prediction score gives me the perfect amount of data to sell to Toyota so they can give you ads on that new Rav 4. It's exactly why we all get that feeling now that your phone is like starting to read your mind. And it's because Genap's data collection has evolved to a point where we can predict exactly what you're going to do next before you even know it. And stepping out of character for a bit, it's not like I'm immune to this either. If you're a longtime viewer, you've probably seen how much weight I've lost like the past year. How do you think I got roped into buying the exact type of supplements in this aura ring that you see on my finger here just a few days ago? But anyways, that's just the beginning because it doesn't just stop at your profile. Remember when you sign up for Genap and it asks to access your contacts? You didn't just give me the data. You gave me the map of everyone you know. And those people don't even have to be on the app. Genap's data collection has gotten so good that I can now build profiles of your mom, your coworker, that girl you keep texting, your friend, anyone who hasn't even signed up for the app yet, all from what you handed me over. And you'll see just how dangerous that can get later on. But on top of all that, unlike almost anything else you can sell, data doesn't get used up. But here's what makes all of this so hard to resist for companies like me. Because the thing about data is that unlike a t-shirt that I sell you with data I can sell the same person's profile to Google to Open AI to insurance company to an advertiser to a data broker all at the same time. And it's exactly why the global data broker industry the companies whose entire job is buying and reselling your information is now worth more than the entire music, movie, and video game industries combined. So the point in all this is that when an app tells you that we don't sell your data like like we do, we're literally sitting on a gold mine here and promising not to dig. So look, I'm not absolving them, but that's obviously a lot of temptation. And as you're about to see, every single one of them eventually starts digging. When WhatsApp first came on the scene, they promised no ads and absolutely no data sharing.

[00:05:16]And that's exactly how they grew to 450 million people by 2014. But guess who owns it now? Discord told its users that we don't sell your data and got to 200 million users. But guess who just quietly changed their privacy policy after flirting with an IPO. And Reddit spent 18 years as this place where real people had real conversations. And there's been over a billion posts, 16 billion comments. But what if I told you that's exactly what's making Reddit's data worth $23 million today? It's three different stories, but the entire time they all had a financial clock that was ticking in the background and eventually the data just became too valuable to leave in the ground. And speaking of money moving behind the scenes in way most people never see, that's where today's sponsor, Airwall, comes in. Most businesses operating globally are quietly losing money to the way traditional banks move it. And the culprit is Swift, a decades old system where your transfer bounces through multiple correspondent banks before it lands, racking up fees along the way and taking days to settle. And with Airwalks, it bypasses all that entirely by routing payments through local payment rails in over 120 countries. And the result is that 93% of transactions arrive the same day and 50% arrive instantly with absolutely no transaction fees. But it's not just for transfers.

[00:06:36]Airwall is an all-in-one payment and financial platform. So you can also open global business accounts, hold multiple currencies, convert at interbank rates, accept payments, and manage company spend all from one place. So if your business moves money across borders like I do, check out Airwalklex at the link below or scan the QR code to get started now. So I showed you the gold mine that an app like Genap sits on and now let me show you exactly when they decide to start digging. And what surprised me is just how similar the playbook is every single time.

[00:07:14]Okay, so let's start with WhatsApp. When Facebook bought them for $19 million in 2014, the co-founder Brian Actton only accepted the deal under very specific circumstances that no matter what, there will be no ads or data sharing. The thing is, Facebook at the time and Meta now kept that promise. Well, kind of. A few years after the acquisition, WhatsApp in 2016 slowly started sharing your phone number and usage data with Facebook. And it became like this default setting that users only had like this 30-day window to opt out, which was of course impossible to even find. And they also made it so that if you joined after August 2016, you didn't even see that option at all. This was actually one of the reasons that Brian Actton ended up leaving in 2017 and from there more things started changing bit by bit because by 2021 a new privacy policy came up and essentially said that you either have to accept data sharing with Facebook or just stop using the app at all. And from there they just stopped even pretending because now in June 2025 11 years after the acquisition Meta has officially launched ads on WhatsApp and if you use WhatsApp you probably have seen it in the updates tab. So step by step, the app whose entire identity was were not Facebook was now starting to run ads for Facebook. And it's exactly how Meta generated 161 billion of their 165 billion in total revenue from advertising. And I'm telling you that in a few years that number is about to go up a whole lot more considering that WhatsApp with 3 billion monthly users was the last major platform in Meta's portfolio that hadn't been touched by ads yet. But let's be real, even after I told you all that, it's not like you're going to leave WhatsApp because again, just like Gen, your whole network is on there. And again, it's exactly why these privacy apps always end up betraying you and how Meta makes $165 billion a year because they bet that you'll never leave. And clearly, that's been paying off. But at least with the WhatsApp betrayal, it was kind of step by step and gradual and they waited for due to leave. But with Reddit, the betrayal was more strategic and a whole lot quicker.

[00:09:22]In 2023, Reddit killed off third-party apps overnight by jacking up the price to access this data. And one of the biggest third party apps was this platform called Apollo, where it was basically like this better version of Reddit that this random independent developer had built on his own over the last 9 years. But after this price hike, he did the math and it will literally cost him $20 million a year to keep running. So he ended up shutting it down with like 30 days notice and a lot of people started getting pissed. Over 6,000 subreddits went dark in protest, but that only lasted for so long and clearly it didn't really matter because Redd is shutting down its APIs was just the first step. But what they were really preparing for was this bigger goal. The day before Reddit filed to go public in February of 2024, they announced $23 million in data licensing deals. And guess who wanted all that data? Right now, Google's paying $60 million a year. Open AAI is paying around $70 million. And I'm sure you already know why. Because you probably already seen this without even realizing it. Try asking Chad GPT or Gemini a question like right now. Right now, I will bet you $100 that whatever question you ask will pull from Reddit. Go on, try it. But Reddit didn't just start selling data. In the same year, Reddit also launched a new ad format that looks exactly like a regular post. In fact, you probably got bamboozled into clicking one if you use it. And just like that, the platform that was supposed to be this authentic alternative to regular social media is now one of the fastest growing app platforms in the entire internet. So, with Reddit, the betrayal was the IPO.

[00:10:56]But just like WhatsApp, what we see is you being sold out, which now perfectly segus me to Discord. And I want you to come back to this video in a few months because what I'm going to tell you, I think is going to come to fruition. In 2022, Discord's privacy policy was super clear. We don't sell your data because our business is based on subscriptions and paid products. And clearly, myself and 200 million other users believed it.

[00:11:21]I mean, I've been running my entire team and business on that platform for years.

[00:11:25]But then in March 2023, Discord quietly made changes. They quietly deleted this clause from its privacy policy that said that it wouldn't store the contents of your calls, streams, or channels. And once users caught on and went crazy, they only decided to put it back a day later because of that backlash. But the thing about Discord is that it must have learned from WhatsApp and Reddit.

[00:11:46]Because that was just a test to see what they can get away with. Because just a few months earlier this year, in January of 2026, Discord quietly filed for an IPO with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

[00:11:58]And then all that privacy went out the window. In February, Discord announced that they would start requiring some users to submit government ID photos or facial scans just to access certain parts of the app.

[00:12:09]But again, that wouldn't be so crazy if it wasn't for the fact that just a few months earlier in October 2025, hackers breached the third-party company that Discord was using for age verification and it exposed roughly 70,000 government ID photos that users had already uploaded. So, what we just saw was that Discord's response to a breach of a bunch of their users government IDs was to ask for more government IDs. But I wish that was all because it turns out one of the companies that they were evaluating to handle this hold verification was this little company called Persona that is partially funded by Peter Theel's founders fund. The same Peter Theel who co-founded Palunteer which builds surveillance tools for the US government by the way. Anyways, Discord eventually delayed the facial scans and the government IDs after more backlash. But the thing is, the IPO is still coming. So, if you've been paying attention so far, you know what's exactly going to come next because just as I was making this video, I even started to see some ads. Now, it was just an ad for their own Discord game, but if I had to guess, that's also probably just a little test until Discord starts showing more and more ads once it officially goes public. So, guess we'll see in a few months whether I was right, but whatever the company or the timeline, what's pretty consistent here is that every single time the promise broke at the exact same moment, and it was usually when the people who funded the company couldn't ignore the gold mine anymore. But here's what none of these companies want you to think about because everything I've shown you so far at least kind of told you that they were doing this. But what happens when your data gets taken and you're not even told about it? And what happens when that pressure isn't coming from investors now, but something much more powerful? And that data that gets taken from you is something that can never be changed.

[00:14:07]So what would be bigger than investor pressure? How about a worldwide manhunt?

[00:14:12]I'm sure you've heard of Pavo Durov, the person who built the messaging app Telegram. But what you may not know is that he'd already been through this once. Before Telegram, he created Russia's biggest social network, VK. And when the Russian government demanded that he hand over user data, bro said no. So they forced him out of his own company and he left the country. And that's exactly what inspired him to build Telegram with end-to-end encryption and a privacy policy that all chats are private and not subject to external requests with the only exception being terrorism. And even then, Telegram almost never responded.

[00:14:46]Pretty ballsy. But on August 24th of 2024, Durov landed on an airport in Paris, was promptly arrested on the spot. The Russian founder of the Telegram messaging app Paval Durov has been arrested at a French airport.

[00:15:00]>> 12 charges, including distributing child exploitation material and drug trafficking. And less than a month later, everything changed. Telegram rewrote its privacy terms where now your IP address and phone number will now be shared with authorities for any valid external requests. So, if you're telling me now that the most stubborn, most committed, and most ideologically driven founder in tech, that no homo looks straight out of a movie, couldn't keep this privacy promise under pressure, what makes you think that any other companies can? And look, honestly, can we even blame him? That guy was literally about to go to prison. What was he even supposed to do? So now when governments can essentially force founders to break their privacy promise, I think at this point you might be thinking, "All right, then I guess I'll just stop using any app." And yeah, sure. I mean, you're not going to, but I guess you can. But the thing is, even if you did, it wouldn't even matter because turns out the tracking doesn't even stop when you leave. Now, a 2024 Apple report found that 96% of apps that ask for tracking permission still collect your behavioral data even after you say no on the popup that says ask app not to track. And now it's not even just apps.

[00:16:13]In 2025, the FDC found that General Motors and OnStar have been tracking drivers precise location every 3 seconds and selling it. So everything from where you drive, how fast you break, when you leave for work. And the worst thing about it is that they were selling that data to insurance companies who were using it to raise your premiums. So yeah, in theory, you could just walk away and stop using technology even though you'll probably just have to live in a hut all day. But what if I told you that now you can be on the hook for other people saying yes to data collection? Because everything that we talked about so far has been some element of choice which allows these sort of apps to collect your digital fingerprint. But what happens when the data that gets leaked is your actual DNA? 23ME built its entire business on the promise that your DNA, the most personal data that exists, was safe with them. In fact, they explicitly stated that your privacy comes first and that no matter what, genetic data will never be shared with employers, insurance companies, or public databases without any sort of explicit consent. But then three things happened. First, the breach. In October of 2023, hackers got into 23 andme and accessed the data of nearly 7 million of its users. But the attack wasn't random, but targeted.

[00:17:31]>> And many of the victims were Jew of Jewish ancestry.

[00:17:34]>> It was this hacker by the name Golem who posted the genetic data of up 1 million Jewish users on a hacking forum and called it the most valuable data you'll ever see. And his motivation for the leak was due to the ongoing war. And soon after the data was sold on the dark web. But that was just the beginning because the second was the bankruptcy.

[00:17:54]23 andme was once valued at $6 billion.

[00:17:57]But by March 2025, it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now, I don't know if you know this, but the moment a company files for bankruptcy, everything it owns essentially becomes this asset on the balance sheet to be sold to pay off the creditors, which means everything from office furniture, computers, and in this case, your DNA, which directly leads me to the third, the sale. The winning bidder for 23me's genetic database was a mysterious nonprofit called TTAM Research Institute. So, who the hell are these people? Well, TTAM was created and controlled by 23 Amid's own founder, Anne Wajiski, who funny enough is the former YouTube CEO's little sister. And it wasn't just her. This mysterious nonprofit was also ran by the same leaders and employees. So, what I'm telling you is that the same company that failed to protect 15 million people's DNA rebranded and packaged themselves as a nonprofit and bought the data back for $35 million. So, as you can imagine, a lot of users were pretty pissed and they tried to delete the data before the sale closed, but they quickly saw that they couldn't even access their own account. And over two dozen state attorney generals sued to block the deal, but none of it mattered and the sale went through anyway. Now, PTAM is saying that they will honor the existing privacy policies to not sell to third parties. And maybe they will, but look, if history shows, all it takes is one decision for any company, whether it's forprofit or nonprofit, to update its terms whenever it wants. But with DNA, it's obviously not just something that you can reset like a password. What makes this entire privacy policy and data collection worrying is that when it comes to handing over your genetic data, you're handing over your entire family lineage, whether it be your parents, your siblings, and even your future kids. So, the point is there is really no version of this where your data stays private forever because the entire time the only question was going to be who was going to get to it first. So, does this just mean that it's all cooked and there's nothing that you can do about it? Because again, I use WhatsApp every day to talk to my girlfriend. I run my business on Discord. And even with everything I told you, if I'm going to be real, I haven't even thought once about deleting any of these apps. And I know I'm not alone, but there is one person who actually did leave. Remember bro that co-founded WhatsApp? Well, what I didn't tell you is that when he walked away from Meta, not only did he walk away from a broken promise, but $850 million in Onvest's shares. So, clearly, this guy does live up to his principles.

[00:20:39]And what he did soon after was take $50 million of his own money and fund another messaging app, Signal. But this time, he learned from his mistakes.

[00:20:49]Signal is run as a nonprofit that runs entirely on donations and the code is open source. So anyone can verify the claims that it doesn't collect any data.

[00:20:58]So full disclosure, they're not paying me to say this at all. But that's pretty cool. But it does remain to be seen whether it does stay that way in the future because obviously I can't promise that they won't get the telegram or 23 and me treatment. But here's what I do know. I've looked at so many different issues now and what's consistent across all of them is that if something keeps getting worse and nobody fixes it, it's always because the people in a position to fix it are benefiting it from it staying broken. And right now there's no financial incentive for governments to protect your data and every financial incentive for investors who want to sell it. And until these incentives flip, we don't sell your data will remain the most profitable sentence in the history of the internet. So anyways, I'll be going deeper into this topic next week in my free newsletter in the video description. But if you haven't seen my last video on how private equity is now starting to buy up YouTube channels just like this one, go and watch that video next and like this video, too. Thanks.