Online Behavior Could Influence Insurance Rates 141
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the brain-tumor-insurance-not-offered-to-youtube-commenters dept.
from the brain-tumor-insurance-not-offered-to-youtube-commenters dept.
storagedude writes "There seems to be no end to the ways your personal data and online behavior can be used against you. According to the Wall Street Journal, insurance companies are considering using online behavioral and social networking data to try to weed out insurance risks. What you read, what you buy, how much TV you watch, your credit, your fan pages... it could all be used to predict your longevity and insurance risk. The practice, which appears to be in the early stages, could raise concerns with the FTC and insurance regulators, but insurance and data mining companies say they just plan to use it to speed up the applications of people who appear to be good risks; others would have to go through more rigorous traditional screening."
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
And TSA x-rays are just to reduce the number of people who have to be submitted to TSA groping.
Re:Habitual slashdot use bodes well. (Score:4, Insightful)
(Yeah I know, facts = karma hell)
It smells in here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Deloitte and the life insurers stress the databases wouldn't be used to make final decisions about applicants.
Bullshit.
She also says that, while Acxiom does store personally identifiable information, it doesn't store or merge anonymous online-tracking data, such as Web-browsing records.
Bullshit.
Units of News Corp., including The Wall Street Journal, supply information to marketing-database firms and buy information from them. "We have strict precautions around confidentiality," a spokeswoman said.
Bullshit.
The insurer says pilot projects with marketing data are continuing in its effort to improve clients' buying experience.
Bullshit.
All these quotes were made by PR and corporate stooges. Does anyone honestly think they would tell the real story?
The First Amendment is Obsolete (Score:5, Insightful)
The First Amendment becomes meaningless as limits to speech come more and more from the corporate sector. In a world where everything you do and say is recorded and databased, and where industries (like insurance) are increasingly dominated by just a few players, stepping out of line even once can have dire consequences. The blacklist is back.
Nothing new here (Score:5, Insightful)
Insurance companies will use whatever information they can get their hands on to try and make sure that what they get paid for providing insurance is appropriate for the risk profile of who/what they are insuring.
It is a core part of their business model to correctly determine the risk profiles of the individual/situation for which they are providing insurance so that they charge the right premium and in aggregate make a profit.
Many of us want to make sure that our genetic information doesn't get collected at thrown into a public database because it would sooner or later end up in the hands of insurance companies and affect our personal premiums for everything from medical insurance to car insurance.
Re:And the first ones to be denied insurance..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Habitual slashdot use bodes well. (Score:4, Insightful)
And single computer geeks need life insurance, for why? Exactly whom would it meant to support, unless of course there is a provable reincarnation option.
Re:The First Amendment is Obsolete (Score:3, Insightful)
offer less risky customers lower rates
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
This will be used to gouge customers arbitrarily, like any and other possible excuse has been used.
My g/f moved in with me recently. The house we live in is 600 yards from her parents house, and on the same estate. They are connected by the same road running through the estate. Turn right for the road to her mom's house, left for ours.
Her insurance premium went up by over £300 (an increase of approx 80%). The reason was that the post code was more at risk. A post code one letter different to the one she resided under previously.
Insurance companies are out to gouge you for profit, and you can't say no unless you're a multi millionaire and can guarantee you can afford the bill if something goes wrong. Don't think they're out to do anything for you. Ever.
the new health care bill bans pre-existing conditi (Score:4, Insightful)
the new health care bill bans pre-existing conditions and makes it so you can't be turned down and any ways how do they even known they have the right name if they just use Google?
Re:It smells in here. (Score:5, Insightful)
They did all kinds of neat things....you fill out a change of address for the post office? Yep, they buy and use those to clean their databases on you. Many states sold and still sell drivers license info, they use that. Do you ever fill out warranty cards for products you buy? Fill in the surveys anywhere? Yep, they know who you are. They can pull up pretty accurate info for likely 95% or so of the people in the US, who knows about foreign countries by now. They can tell how much you make, if you wear glasses.....any number of personal or financial traits you might have.
They are VERY good at it. Heck, after 9/11...the Feds used Acxiom to start data mining for terrorists.
I know they have info on me, but I try not to make it easy. At the one grocery store I shop at that still uses customer cards...I am registered at a 98 yr old hispanic lady named Goldenberg...and a native of Sweden. I just make sure and only pay cash at that store. I fill out every possible survey and form out incorrectly trying to skew their data profile on me. Post Katrina, as I moved around...they lost me for a bit. But I think they have me decently again, due to magazine publications I like to read.
Oh well...hard to stay invisible these days...but you don't have to try to actively try to help them. That facebook thing looks like it could be fun, but man, I just cannot bear to let even more info out about me voluntarily.
Re:The First Amendment is Obsolete (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The First Amendment is Obsolete (Score:3, Insightful)
So long as there is competition between insurers there will be lower rates for the less risky customers. If the risk is balanced correctly with the cost, insurers are still basically printing money.
Re:The First Amendment is Obsolete (Score:3, Insightful)
If it makes the fat slob who smokes and drinks too much pay more and me less instead of forcing me to support his bad habits, OK with me.
If you're the fat slob, you might disagree.
Re:And the first ones to be denied insurance..... (Score:4, Insightful)
And the worst thing you could possibly do to someone?
wget -r http://webmd.com/ [webmd.com]
Re:It smells in here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding?
In the US, there are VERY few laws about personal data collection and distribution. If you read the article, it says Acxiom and these other companies are very wary about selling this information to the insurance companies for this usage, in fear that it might trip up some regulations that do exist (with the FTC I think?).
But really, with the exception for HIPAA type information, in the USA, it is pretty much the wild west out there...anyone can gather what information they want on you, and use it in almost any fashion without any repercussions from the very few laws that do exist out there concerning this.
And these companies don't want this kind of attention, nor this kind of regulation in the future. They make a LOT of money with this stuff.
One interesting project Acxiom had going on back in the day, was to come up with the perfect personal identifier, so as to make it easier to identify you as you moved, married, changed names, changed SSN, etc. They want to track you from birth to death, and by now, I'm sure they do a pretty darned good job of it.
I do not condone violence like you alluded to...there are innocent people there working that are just trying to earn a living. And it is a free country, and this is perfectly legal what they do. If you don't like it..legal action is the path to take.
Re:Well good luck finding me (Score:4, Insightful)
So Mr spectro, you've really used a pseudonym and kept that pseudonym separate from anything that could be traced to you? Because otherwise you're just one data breech away from the link.
Has America died? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you claiming that Google is selling browser history data to the health care industry?
How much is being paid?
Exactly who is buying.
I suspect that this is not the case since this would fundamentally destroy their business and they are or at least should be sensible enough to recognize this.
Rather, I suspect, but can not as yet prove, that it is the health care industry mining data from social networking sites and on-line marketers that are the primary culprits in this. Exactly, how much is being paid to and by who needs to be the subject of a much wider debate. Otherwise, the entire concept of American democracy is dead.
Re:Predicting the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with your cookies, browsing history, etc. It will be an accumulation of your searches, shopping habits, media habits, social networks, etc. Your online behaviour as seen by third parties. They will scrape what they can and buy the rest. They are basically profiling people looking for correlations with their insurance risks. This is nothing new, it is what they have been doing for years. They are just looking at adding new data points that are cheaper and readily available.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, the better science gets, the less insurance works, and the more you just need socialism (or not - depending on your views).
The whole concept of something like health insurance is that you don't know if you're going to need it, and so you buy it just in case. If you know if you're going to need it, then it loses its purpose. Either companies also know and you can't afford it, or companies aren't allowed to know and all go out of business since healthy people won't buy it.
If the goal is socialism we can just cut out the middleman and treat it like any other social program. If the goal is actually insurance then eventually we'll hit a point where we can't accomplish that goal.