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Insurance Claims to be Tested by Lie Detector
Albanach writes "HBOS, one of the largest UK banks is to introduce random lie detector analysis of insurance claims according to this article from the Edinburgh Evening News. The three month trial will see calls from its 1.5 million policy holders randomly subjected to voice stress analysis. Those flagged up will then receive a set of questions designed to expose 'potential fraudsters'."
they'll be chosen randomly, more like a 'you fit our demographics for a lieing bastard lie detector test.' Isn't this an illegal detainment/unjust search? What are the search/seizure laws in the UK anyways?
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Wouldn't it be natural to have stress in your voice if something has happened in your life causing you to file an insurance claim?
So, when their customer who has just been involved in an auto accident calls and reports the accident to the insurance, their voice will not in the least be affected by stress?
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Lie detectors are not effective. This is just being used to scare people into thinking they can't lie.
It will decrease my insurance premiums. Probably not.
Any time they come up with BS like this they always claim it will lower premiums and give some inflated figure of how much fraudulent claims are costing them, but who is to say how many of those fraudulent claims are not just the companies finding a loophole to screw anybody who makes a claim.
Can't stand them, they have a business model where everybody has to give them money and they resent anybody with a legitimate claim to it.
So will the insurance companies be willing to undergo lie detector tests themselves? If they are going to dish it out, they should be willing to take it.
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I've been submitted to a lie detector one time. Basically my house was broken into, and to clear my name, the police wanted to give me a lie detector test (i don't know off hand what kind it was) but i basically failed the test. The problem is that I failed the preliminary test too. I failed questions that were specifically designed to be correct.
Do you live in the state of michigan?
Do you live in the United States?
Are you 17 years old?
If you can't pass questions that are geared to be absolutely correct, than why do they still consider you failing the actual test as you lieing? I'm afraid something like this would happen in this situation.
Just giving my $0.02 worth.
I will endure to the end.
"Everyone lies, Michael. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they did not do. The guilty lie because they don't have any other choice."
----- Sinclair, "Babylon 5", 'And the Sky Full of Stars'
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Apparently the system isn't capable of false positives. "You can't be innocent, the machine says you're guilty. And since only guilty people are caught by the machine, you can't be innocent. QED."
Also note that the article is talking about voice-analysis stress testing (over the phone, surely that couldn't ever be inaccurate), not polygraphs. Polygraphs are a crock as well, of course, but this isn't them.
1) innocent people trigger lie detectors.
2) It becomes a 'prove your innocent' case if someone thinks you are lying.
3)people come to trust machines. So they will take a failable machine over a person.
4)the agent has to look at evicence and facts to determin wether you are lying.
5)IT put the burden of proof onto the victim.
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No, but as they plan to use this method only to find possible frauds, and investigate them using more standard methods, your point isn't valid.
Don't you think insurance companies have some lawyers paid to think about such issues before spending money on them ?
blah
... as long as I can do the reverse. I want to make sure that when my insurance rep says "your covered" he doesn't mean "your covered as long as you never make a claim."
I also want to get a truthful answer to the question "Will I be dropped after my first claim?"
"Honest policyholders will have nothing to fear and combating fraud will make things better for them anyway by helping to keep premium costs down."
Yeah, right. Honest policyholders do have something to fear; the fear that when this flim-flam pseudoscience piece of crap system randomly flags them as a liar!
Actually, the insurance company will probably use this like the police do. The insurance company will use the voice analysis technology against people who they already think are trying to defraud the company. They know it doesn't work worth a damn, but use people's ignorance of technology against them to get them to confess to faking a claim. The police do the same thing, they tell a suspect that they have failed a voice analysis test and use that as extra leverage to try to get that person to confess. It only works if the person is gullible enough to believe that the technology works.
-Matt
Lie detectors are not evidence, they only lead to further investigations, which is fair enough.
From a crowd (/.) that not only advocates free speech but also the freedom to listen to anything that is being transmitted, yet you opose to a 3rd party listening in on your own transmissions?
Of course someone whose house has just burned down or car totaled will be stressed, but the evidence in these cases is so clear, that a police report can be trusted, something which can't be said about foreign police reports of many people who have the camera they don't like anymore "stolen" (as in donated to a nephew) on holiday. Claiming that, usualy days or weeks after the fact shouldn't put you under much stress, if it does and you can't come up with a good story to further questions, hesitating on too many details you hadn't thought about when concieving your fraud...
I am sceptical about the system but don't see this to be that much of an invasion of privacy.
And of course, real scammers will easily get by this. And since like most "security" measures, it make them watchers complacent: "Nobody is getting past our lie detectors."
I doubt these voice stress "lie detectors" are any better than the conventional polygraph tests. I participated in a study in college and found the conventional polygraph easy to beat.
Two years later while still in college I was working at a chain store in the local mall. Corporate headquarters "randomly" selected the store for polygraph testing of all employees. You can't refuse without being fired since you almost certainly agreed to polygraph tests as a condition of employment when you were hired.
When my turn came, I went in and sat down. The process was explained and I was handed some forms to sign. They basically said I wouldn't hold them responsible for any harm to me, my reputation, etc. from the test or their use of its results. It also said they could give the info to anyone they felt needed to know. I refused to sign the forms. I then held out my arm and said they have my permission to hook up the machine and proceed with the test.
That confused the hell out of them!
"I can't administer the test until you sign the form", he said. I told them that is not my problem. I aggree to the test. It is your decision to administer it or not.
They decided not to. They gave me a "security interview" instead. All the same questions but no polygraph machine. The man administering the test said that the security interview is actually more acurate because people are more relaxed and reveal more information.
"Honest policyholders will have nothing to fear and combating fraud will make things better for them anyway by helping to keep premium costs down."
Of course they leave out:
1) He was lying.
2) Since he is a practiced glib liar there was no hint of stress in his voice at all.
First off, I have to laugh when I read an article where lie detectors are described as "scientific" "sophisticated" and "accurate." They are frequently described as such, but it is clearly not the case. Even proponents, when pressed, always end up admitting that the "lie detector" is supposed to test stress levels; in other words, proponents of lie detectors usually lie in order to push them as a panacea.
Secondly, the biggest, oldest lie any insurance company can tell is that their rates are going to go down if you allow them to implement something. Insurance companies have historically tried to push legislation, promising practically every time that such legislation / policy change / newfound power will result in lower rates (mandatory automobile coverage comes to mind) but it never does. I go so far as to say I would think anyone would be hard pressed to come up with a single form of insurance in which rates have *ever* gone down, in fact.
Thirdly, the insurance company says that lie detector tests have been successful in reducing fraud. They do not qualify this at all, but I would think being able to point to a number and say "We were able to deny X million dollars worth of claims on the basis of lie detector tests alone!" would be considered a success, especially considering that the avoidance of paying claims, at any cost, any way they can is a goal to all insurance companies second only to raking in your cash.
...is that most people generally have very good reasons for sounding distressed during a call an insurance company.
How is someone supposed to calmly explain they just lost their entire family to a car crash, saw their child die in a terrorist attack, or just permanently lost the use of their arm to the wood chipper? How are they supposed to do this while navigating the vast innefficient bureaucracy insurers have erected to keep callers to a minimum? Just getting through the bloody voice mail tree is often more than enough to send most folks into a rage, which'll probably light these lie detectors up like Times Square on New Year's Eve.
I get the feeling this is just another attempt for insurance companies to try and justify claim denials. Cheap and cruelly insensitive.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
CLAIMS are a huge problem in the insurance industry and all insurance companies do their utmost to avoid paying them.
Insurance companies employ people whose sole purpose in life is to find ways of weaseling out of perfectly legitimate claims.
That's disgusting.
There ought to be a consumer association that prepared figures of how much money each insurance company dodged paying to customers that thought they were covered (thanks to the persuasive sales staff) and ranked them.
That way, when you were thinking of buying a policy, you could check out the company and see how likely they are to actually pay out on a claim.
Insurance companies are wank*rs. Greedy, amoral, heartless wank*rs. Trust me.
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Insurance Claims to be Tested by Lie Detector... Oh I had the faint hope that the policies they offer would be put under scrutiny. Hope springs eternal, Christian
It's not an issue with calculating it, it's the fact that, while the odds are in your favor, the worst case is really bad. Would you rather buy something for $5, or have a 1 in 10,000 chance of paying $10,000 for it? Sure, the first is more expensive on average, but for the second, you have to be able to afford $10,000 in order to be safe. The insurance company is going to play 100,000 times, so they can take advantage of the fact that it will average out; you play only once, so it doesn't average out-- it's either good or really bad.
The other thing is that insurance companies get bulk discounts on a lot of the things that payments go towards. It costs them less to get your car repaired, because they have a lot of car repair business, than it would cost you for the same repair.