Online Behavior Could Influence Insurance Rates 141
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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."
Predicting the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) People will "game" the system to get cheaper quotes (e.g. fake browser history, fake cookies, etc).
2) Some insurance company which doesn't really understand technology will either sue a client, or try and withhold a payout
3) A 70 year old judge will agree that fake browser history (or "privacy" as I like to call it) is fraud
4) A law will be passed making it illegal to tamper with or destroy your browsing history, or to attempt to avoid tracking while online
Screening differences = huge cost differences (Score:1, Interesting)
Because of the volumes of insurance contracts processed by small companies (foreclosure situations case in point), anyone who does not 'fit the mold' of the initial screen will probably be rejected.
I myself needed to take up a loan once here in the UK because I had after a year-long degree managed to secure a high paying job, but needed to secure the last rent payment. If my bank had shut down my account it would have been a terrible blow to my reputation at the new firm. Unfortunately all loan applications are processed by screens, and they all look ask whether you have worked in gainful employment for the last 6 months or something along those lines (yes, even my own bank).
Despite having a signed contract to come in at £80k I could not even borrow £500 at a lender charging 2000%.
In consumer banking and finance screens are almighty and firms will simply reject whoever doesn't pass them. There is no reason why the situation for social patterns that need manual processing to end up differently from income patterns that need manual processing.
Fear more powerful than facts (Score:3, Interesting)
We see this reality at play everywhere from religion to medicine to the stock market. Anti-gun people even today have conveniently ignored the positive effects of concealed handgun licenses across the US and continue to cry "blood in the streets."
And of course insurance companies are looking for new excuses to raise rates. (How often do you see rates decline? Not often... I have USAA insurance, but they seem the be the only exception... my rates went down again with my most recent renewal.) Greed knows no limits. It's the justification and reasonableness that are growing more and more scarce.
I would say that this is "old news" or not news at all if it weren't for the fact that people simply need to learn to accept and embrace certain aspects of the reality of human nature that are continually used against us all. We don't use facts when fear is so much more effective at getting the immediate results desired.
Re:the new health care bill bans pre-existing cond (Score:3, Interesting)
They have an increased risk that you might potentially be a person who has, or has family who have, a given condition. Therefore you should pay more for insurance, because you (or someone who could be mistaken for you) presented some interest in Percutaneous Transhepatic Cholangiography, for example.
Re:It smells in here. (Score:1, Interesting)
I work for Acxiom now, and can tell you they don't keep online tracking stats. I think people give them more credit then what they are capable of doing. I sometimes wish they would start a project like that, as I get bored with the majority of the development work here.
Re:It smells in here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It smells in here. (Score:3, Interesting)
The rules and restrictions I speak of are only applicable to GOVERNMENT. For example, there are ample laws in place to prevent the use of social security numbers for purposes other than social security account management. But there are not laws that say entities other than government can't use that number and so they do. In fact, there's no law that says state and local government can't -- the law only applies to federal government. But there are also laws preventing the sharing of collected law enforcement data among agencies as well. The ability to share such data among agencies was a hot topic not too long ago. Where were you?
As for violence against innocents go, we get more than our share of it by "doing nothing." Just as in the case of concealed handgun permits, we only stand to reduce needless violence by taking action rather than doing nothing and being passive.
More and more we hear about police violence justified by "resistance" by the people. And increasingly, video evidence to that proves the "government lied" emerges... which results in more actions to make illegal such recordings. The cycle goes on and on. "Doing nothing" will result in the problems getting worse and more and more innocents falling victim.
I know I don't have the balls to do anything myself and would likely report anyone I knew who would be the next McVeigh. But still -- I sit back quietly and hope for the removal of various things I see as a big problem in the world. Those include:
1. Spammers ...and lots more...
2. Advertisers/Marketers
3. Legal-system-abusing trolls
4.
I fail to list "corrupt politicians" because I don't see them as a problem as much as they are a symptom. EVERYONE, including myself, is corruptible. Corruption is a problem of opportunity, not of character.
And as far as innocent employees of Acxiom goes? Really? Are you serious? I know the job market has its problems, but anyone who works at Acxiom knows what Acxiom does and that, at the very least, being employed there exposes them to risk of angry people. So unless there are people who just stopped in to ask for directions, there aren't many innocents at Acxiom.
Similarly, there is a growing list of business types that I will not work for. Among these are:
1. Jewelers and related (debeers) ...and more...
2. Advertising/Marketing companies
3. Intellectual property driven businesses
4.
See a pattern here? I also will not work for any company involved in the Miltary Industrial Complex... same reasons. No innocents -- when you are making bullets for sale to the military, the chances are good that what you touched with your hands will be used to kill people. How innocent are THEY?
Insurance companies spying on people, old news (Score:5, Interesting)
Health insurance companies often send private investigators after people who they think might be feigning injury. I've heard of this happening about a decade ago.
Car insurance companies send lookouts to street racer hangouts and sometimes even 100% legal track meets to look for customers to cut off (almost all insurance contracts say that participating in a timed run or contest of speed is not covered. It's standard procedure for us low-budget racers to get a barebones insurance package for our streetable track rats and just not tell the insurance companies shit...we fix our own vehicles of course and pay for separate event insurance, so the insurance company basically gets free money for giving us a piece of paper we need in case we get pulled over, but they aren't happy with this for some reason.)
This isn't even the first instance of insurance company spying ON THE INTERNET - a couple of years ago there was a story of a depressed woman cut off from her health care insurance because she posted a happy status update and a pic of her smiling to her Facebook page.
Re:the new health care bill bans pre-existing cond (Score:5, Interesting)
And even better, you can't turn them down, because under Obamacare, you have to have insurance even if they set the premium so high that you can't afford it. This will be the best thing to happen to the insurance companies since, well, everything else that has happened to the insurance companies. Thank you Obama, for bailing out the already rich insurance companies.