Topic: Financial Data

While "unclaimed.org" is a useful tool for finding lost money, it also presents a potential privacy and security issue, as it allows anyone to search for another person's name and see their associated addresses. The hosts discuss how this information can be used for informal background checks or to track individuals. They recommend that producers clear out their own unclaimed property to remove this data from public view.

A federal judge has restructured the timeline for the FDA to release Pfizer vaccine trial documents, requiring 20,000 pages to be released monthly through April. Concurrently, Pfizer has added new language to its financial earnings reports regarding risks associated with preclinical and clinical safety data. These disclosures follow legal pressure to increase transparency regarding the vaccine's original approval process.

Visa recently acquired Plaid, a financial middleware company, for $5 billion. Plaid acts as a bridge between banks and apps like Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase by using "screen scraping" technology, which requires users to provide their bank login credentials. This allows Plaid to emulate a user and access full transaction histories. The hosts warned that this creates a massive security vulnerability and a "murky" legal environment regarding data ownership and liability.

The discussion focuses on reports that Facebook has requested customer transaction data from major banks like JPMorgan Chase to build more detailed user profiles. The hosts question the legality of banks sharing such sensitive information and express concern over the "closing loop" of data between financial institutions and social media giants.

The European Parliament is set to approve a bank transfer information-sharing agreement with the US under the SWIFT system. The deal is intended to track terrorist financing but raises significant concerns regarding the privacy of international financial transactions.