Challenging technology to serve the public good.
Jon Keegan was an Investigative Data Journalist at The Markup until July 2024.
Jon is passionate about revealing the hidden patterns created by our interactions with the big platforms. He is happiest when his computer’s fan is running full-tilt while collecting millions of rows of data.
Before The Markup, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, researching signals of trust in online news and studying the role of AI in journalism. He also worked at The Wall Street Journal for 18 years, where he ran the interactive graphics team.
Jon’s work has won several journalism awards, including the Loeb Award, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism Award and the Society of News Design’s Best of Digital Gold Award.
Privacy
A spreadsheet on ad platform Xandr’s website revealed a massive collection of “audience segments” used to target consumers based on highly specific, sometimes intimate information and inferences
Privacy
A proposed class-action lawsuit cites Markup reporting and claims the family-tracking app did not get user consent to sell location data
Hello World
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos of 1,573 people for decades, including 175 minors, until we asked about them
Privacy
When you use supermarket discount cards, you are sharing much more than what is in your cart—and grocery chains like Kroger are reaping huge profits selling this data to brands and advertisers
The Breakdown
As Elon Musk sends Twitter into chaos, we’re sharing what we picked up about Mastodon as we selected a server
Privacy
Before you got in line on Election Day, the emerging and largely unregulated political tracking industry was able to trace your movements
The Breakdown
A firehose of sensitive data from your vehicle is flowing to a group of companies you’ve probably never heard of
Citizen Browser
The ads appear as the company faces criticism for limiting content about medication abortions
Privacy
A free trial dashboard from INRIX listed Planned Parenthood as a “chain,” with at least 71 locations in 35 states
Pixel Hunt
Personal information from reviewers was also exposed until The Markup’s inquiry
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