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Online Behavior Could Influence Insurance Rates
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."
Some members of an auto-cross club posted pictures of a recent event on a forum and got their insurance cancelled.
clearly you don't know what an actuary is.
You may laugh, but I remember driving into Dallas a decade ago and seeing a billboard for an I-have-herpes dating service. That would be a really... interesting client list.
Something like between 1 in 5 to 1 in 8 adults have genital herpes. So it is likely that someone you know has it. Although there are also stats that say only 1 in 5 who have it actually know they have it as it is hard to correctly diagnose.
I'm posting anon (let me just check that again!) because I do have HSVII and belonging to a social group where everyone has the same socially (yet in our opinion unfairly) stigmatized disease is a emotional relief.
I was lucky enough to think of using a pseudonym the first time I got online through a 2400 bps modem and I have kept that since then. It was really useful when I got hired as programmer for a defense contractor, I caught my manager goggling me and of course he found nothing. I use fake names in social networks... my friends know who really I am.
Only websites where I use my real identity are the ones who already got my personal info through other means (banks, credit cards, insurance, etc).
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
If you think that a "fat slob" paying more for his insurance means that you'll pay less, you have a very naive view of insurance companies. Or companies in general. Also, how diligent do you think they'll be to check that you're not a fat slob? Remember that banks have been foreclosing on houses that weren't even in default!
I would rather be killed by a terrorist than enslaved by my government.
Its not in their interest to tell the real story. If one thing can be learned from history, its that corporations will not regulate themselves.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".