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."

Comments

Of course

[ciaran_o_riordan]

And TSA x-rays are just to reduce the number of people who have to be submitted to TSA groping.

Sure wish I didn't join the

[ciderbrew]

I've got an STD facebook group.

Re:Sure wish I didn't join the

[Chrisq]

I've got an STD facebook group.

I didn't know that so many people were interested in telephony and call routing.

Habitual slashdot use bodes well.

[Chrisq]

Habitual slashdot use bodes well for your insurance rate. Mom's basement is pretty safe and the chances of catching an STD are as limited by the low probability of meeting a female in real life.

Re:Habitual slashdot use bodes well.

[goldaryn]

It's a good job that the sedentary lifestyle correlating with prolonged computer usage isn't a major risk factor in heart disease then

(Yeah I know, facts = karma hell)

Re:Habitual slashdot use bodes well.

[rtb61]

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.

Predicting the future...

[Manip]

Here is what will happen:
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

Re:Predicting the future...

[sakti]

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.

It smells in here.

[AnonymousClown]

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?

Re:It smells in here.

[cayenne8]

I used to work for Acxiom a long time back....and it was scary THEN what information they have on people. Back then, we were looking to expand into Europe, etc for information gathering.

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:It smells in here.

[cayenne8]

"The government has rules and restrictions about the data it is allowed to collect and connect. "

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:It smells in here.

[Antisyzygy]

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.

The First Amendment is Obsolete

[drooling-dog]

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.

Re:The First Amendment is Obsolete

[cusco]

It seems a lot more likely to me that they'll use the information retroactively, to deny valid claims. Get in a late night car accident and you may be on the hook for all the liability that they originally told you would be covered because someone with the handle Maxume posted on Car And Driver's reader forum about participating in illegal street racing.

Nothing new here

[Aceticon]

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:Nothing new here

[Rich0]

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.

Re:And the first ones to be denied insurance.....

[Culture20]

No, probably people who use search engines to look up medical conditions. It'll be the new "pre-existing condition" metric. Doctor's records are so passe.

the new health care bill bans pre-existing conditi

[Joe The Dragon]

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:And the first ones to be denied insurance.....

[sorak]

And the worst thing you could possibly do to someone?

wget -r http://webmd.com/

Re:Well good luck finding me

[Jaqenn]

I've been using a pseudonym for a long long time...but that includes creating accounts for WoW or whatever other services, and I've given them enough billing information for someone to link my pseudonym and my real name.

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.

Insurance companies spying on people, old news

[GameboyRMH]

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

[tompaulco]

"You can't be turned down" is irrelevant because they can charge you whatever they want.
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.