British Startup Strip Mines Renters' Private Social Media For Landlords (washingtonpost.com)

Rick Zeman writes: Creepy British startup Score Assured has brought the power of "big data" to plumb new depths. In order to rent from landlords who use their services, potential renters are "...required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles. From there, Tenant Assured scrapes your site activity, including entire conversation threads and private messages; runs it through natural language processing and other analytic software; and finally, spits out a report that catalogs everything from your personality to your 'financial stress level.'" This "stress level" is a deep dive to (allegedly) determine whether the potential renter will pay their bills using vague indicators like "online retail social logins and frequency of social logins used for leisure activities." To make it worse, the company turns over to the landlords' indicators that the landlords aren't legally allowed to consider (age, race, pregnancy status), counting on the landlords to "do the right thing." As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report, unlike with credit reports. Landlords first, employers next...and then? As the co-founder says, "People will give up their privacy to get something they want" and, evidently, that includes a place to live and a job. In late May, an apartment building in Salt Lake City told tenants living in the complex to "like" its Facebook page or they will be in breach of their lease.

Comments

Re: It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Tricky in the uk the current government has engeineered an intentional housing and renting bubble over 10% faster than wages. Which has been exaggerated by Chinese/russian magnates buying property just as an investment. If enough landlords like it you wont have a choice

No, its because of social media it happens

[Viol8]

If Millenials weren't so damn eager to tell the whole world and his dog about their tedious lives on social media in the first place this company couldn't exist. Reap what you sow kiddies.

Re: landlords aren't legally allowed to consider

[TroII]

Once a criminal serves their time in prison, or more likely are simply released with a caution or ASBO, they are Reformed. They will be good for their entire life, so landlords and the like have no right to know whether their would-be tenant blew up his last two apartments and left meth-lab chemicals saturating the walls to neighboring units.

So your preferred alternative is that once released, this person should be marked for life, and no one will ever rent to them again? You enjoy having a large homeless population in your city, do you?