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.

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.

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: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.

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.