I spent six months tracing where your data actually goes after you click 'Accept All' - what I found is a global supply chain of control that no single regulator can touch - Silicon Canals

"What I found over six months of interviews with ad tech engineers, privacy researchers, former data broker employees, and one remarkably candid compliance officer at a major European publisher is something that resembles a global supply chain more than it resembles anything the word "privacy" can meaningfully describe. The infrastructure is vast, deliberately fragmented, and designed to make accountability structurally impossible."

"When you click "Accept All" on a cookie consent banner, a real-time bidding auction begins. This is well-documented. What is less well-documented is the sheer scale of participation in that auction and the volume of data that gets sprayed outward before any transaction is even completed."

A six-month investigation into data flows following cookie consent reveals a fragmented, deliberately opaque infrastructure spanning dozens of third-party domains per click. Real-time bidding auctions trigger massive data transmissions before any transaction completes. Interviews with ad tech engineers, privacy researchers, and compliance officers expose how data moves through a complex supply chain designed to prevent accountability. Current regulatory frameworks like GDPR and CCPA were built for an outdated data economy model. The infrastructure's scale and deliberate fragmentation make individual data journeys essentially untraceable, rendering traditional privacy protections structurally ineffective.

Read at Silicon Canals