Dr Elizabeth Farries Interviewed for RTÉ PrimeTime
Dr Sarah Anne Dunne
02.10.2025. Last week, RTÉ PrimeTime released a worrying exposé that revealed the widescale sale of geospatial data by compaies working in digital marketing and advertising, raising serious concerns over both personal privacy and national and domestic security. Data from tens of thousands of phones captured the daily, minute-by-mibute movement of individuals, and, though anonymised, was noted as creating serious privacy risks that threatens personal well-being and security.
Our own Dr Elizabeth Farries spoke with PrimeTime host Kate McDonald about this and related issues, such as data collecting, app monitoring and consent fatigue:
“It comes from really innocuous places, like it can come from your weather app, it can come from your fitness app or from gaming sites; and so the system takes all these little bits of information, ad-brokers pick it all up. They bundle it. They build this really detailed picture of what your are interested in, and what you might do next. And then they sell it so that you get these things called personalised ads”
Dr Farries continued by highlighting the necessity for many apps for everyday routines – including education – and the difficulty that remains in avoiding becoming another data node in these markets.
Watch the full investigation and read the report at RTÉ PrimeTime’s webpage.
