Aussie Bank Wants To Trade Social Network Data For Better Deals

natecochrane writes "An Australian bank has raised the possibility of offering better deals to customers who share its social network activities with it. But at the same security conference at which Commonwealth Bank's CIO made the suggestion, another speaker, security guru Bruce Schneier, warned of the dangers of vendor lock-in. Would you trust your bank — or any institution — to be the gatekeeper for your private data and thoughts in return for a cheaper mortgage or percentage points off your credit card?"

Comments

Happily

[Walterk]

Considering my facebook account is empty - and purposefully so - yes, I would happily share additional lack of information for a better deal.

Of course!

[0100010001010011]

As long as they can deal with the fact that I'm a 90 year old female that lives in 90210.

Oh, you mean we have to tell the truth? Somewhere there is an entire branch of statistics dedicated to throwing away the mandatory answers I give to some websites.

Re:Of course!

[w_dragon]

If you're getting more than a 3% discount it's probably because they aren't planning on paying taxes on your purchase, not because they can skip the CC fee. Visa and MasterCard are in the 2.5-3% range mostly, Amex is a fair bit higher. Plus deposit fees plus the time you have to pay employees to balance the cash in tills aren't free.

Re:depends.. how good deals?

[marcosdumay]

Probably the banks already offer better discounts for people that use credit in a sane way, or have anything to lose in a bankrupcy. It is a different kind of market, and those people probably won't want this smaller discount.

Anyway, gimmick marketing toward young people is very important for companies that have a long term relationship with clients (like banks). We are seeing an example of banks being smart the right way (instead of being dumb managers and smartly stealing from governments to compensate). That is a nice change of tone.

All that different?

[necro81]

Is it really all that different to the implicit arrangement we have now: credit card companies and banks mining our purchasing habits to sell to advertisers? Or what facebook, advertisers, and every online presence with a "Like" button does? If anyone is worried about vendor lock in, they should have already abandoned Facebook and the like. Uprooting and changing banks is not nearly as difficult as, say, migrating email addresses, let alone going to a different social network (even if such a thing were possible).

Across the board cost hike, phony discount?

[swb]

Why does this sound like one of those 'deals' that simply becomes a rate hike for everyone and the discount for disclosing information just puts you back at the normal price?

Or they introduce a new fee or surcharge for not providing this info?

Or becomes one more bogus way to manufacture fake lending risk (like driving records) -- how would you like your Facebook profile factored into your credit score?

Re:depends.. how good deals?

[flaming error]

FTA I think it's more than just gimmick - the banks see amazon/ebay/paypal encroaching on banking turf, so the bank is trying to expand into web portal turf to compete.

And whether its banking turf or web turf, we customers are the turf they battle on, and whatever remaining wealth we may have is what they battle for.

Re:Happily Amish

[sconeu]

He's using butterflies