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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.
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
“If you’re living a normal life,” Thornhill reassures me, “then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about.”"
The definition of "normal" is not for this company, or my landlord, to decide.
"Tenant Assured doesn’t give users any way to view their ratings or dispute misleading data."
I think Tenant Assured might find that European law has quite a different view on that.
But I am happy to create an empty Facebook profile and share it with my landlord. I'll even put a post up there about paying my bills on time, and getting an early night. No other data in there? I'm sorry, I don't use Facebook that much, and it's not compulsory to use Twitter, so I don't have anything to share with you there.
What does that mean? A landlord can't turn someone down without having to give a legal and adequate reason? Could a landlord have to defend a rejection of a tenant, in court?
The problem with bringing up terms like "legally defend" is the fact that it's going to cost someone money to do so. And likely more than they can afford. I'm willing to bet that the "target" audience for this are those who cannot afford to challenge this legally, which is almost as disgusting as the actions to destroy privacy detailed in TFS.
This needs to be shut down. The world needs to see this and respond. It's too bad most don't give a shit about privacy anymore.
Quite honestly, it's sad, because if a boycott of online services created an impact large enough (read: people would have to start giving a shit about privacy again), then social media owners would be the one legally challenging this. I'd love to see this piss-ant start up defend themselves against the social media giants.
Also, perhaps someone should dig deeper into this "start-up", because this almost smells State-sponsored. Can't think of too many other entities that would be data-mining like this.
Wow. I'm not on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, but I do have a twitter account. Which I only use for following porn stars and for trolling. Guess I won't be renting via any agency that uses this service ;).
In all honesty, I highly doubt this will stand up. In connection with employers asking for social media passwords of employees;
A spokesman for the ICO [Information Commissioner's Office] said: "The UK Data Protection Act clearly says that organisations shouldn't hold excessive information about individuals, and it's questionable why they would need that information in the first place." [...] "In the UK, however, it would potentially put employers in breach of the Data Protection Act because it would constitute "excessive" information about an individual, the ICO indicated. "We would have very serious concerns if this practice was to become the norm in the UK," (article).
If that's true for employers, I'd say it's way more true for landlords and letting agencies, so I'd expect the ICO to have a few things to say on this. Seems like a probable violation of the Data Protection Act.
Oh no... it's the future.
Has this startup started up?? (or is it just crap at rendering itself in Chrome?) - to quote it's website: Clever Tenant Referencing "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum at consectetur sem, eget tempus lacus. Curabitur at cursus est. Suspendisse lectus lorem, porttitor sodales porttitor ac, dapibus eu lorem. Nullam in sodales dolor."
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.
Glad I no-longer rent. But my experience with bad landlords left me wondering why there isnt something like this but in favour of tennants who wish to check if their prospective landlord isnt an arse.
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Also, perhaps someone should dig deeper into this "start-up", because this almost smells State-sponsored. Can't think of too many other entities that would be data-mining like this.
Are you kidding? Landlords would chew their arm off to use this service. No sinister state sponsored motive required.
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It's trickier than that in the UK. Demand for housing, even rental housing, currently outstrips supply in much of the country (certainly in the parts with major economic activity where people want to live). Our planning system mostly dates from the late 1960s and was designed to limit urban sprawl. That's getting very painful in light of the population growth we've seen over the last two decades, but the system has a powerful NIMBY lobby that defends it from any attempts at reform.
Alongside this, we've seen a huge rise in the buy-to-let market. The media focus tends to be on Russian/Chinese oligarchs buying up central London housing, but in reality, this impact of this is largely dwarfed by the armies of baby-boomers who, spurred on by various cultural and economic factors, have decided to invest in buying properties to rent out instead of more traditional pensions/savings/investments. There have been some recent efforts by Government to stem this tide, but it's too soon for them to have had any real effect.
The end result of all this is that getting a place to live in a good chunk of the UK is now an undignified scramble. Even grotty rental places often only remain available for a few hours and are the subject of unseemly (and sometimes illegal) bidding wars between potential tenants.
The startup described in TFA sounds, to be blunt, illegal. I cannot possibly see how what they are doing complies with the data protection act and the degree of coverage they're getting makes me suspect that they will be flipped from start-up to close-down quite quickly. That said, somebody will probably tweak the model to comply with the relevant laws and come back with it in a few months time.
My own solution to this kind of thing is fairly simple. I have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but there is absolutely nothing on there that does not need to be on there. These exist purely so that I have something that I can put down on forms for job applications etc. They have some professional biographical information, a few links to the profiles of colleagues who have created profiles for the same purposes (and have similarly bland, corporate profiles) and nothing else. I have no "personal" account on these sites as I feel no need to broadcast my life and I would not touch Twitter with a shitty stick.
So yeah... you want access to my Facebook and LinkedIn, go ahead. Trust me, they have an anaesthetic effect.
So you say that breaking at least four contracts (the Terms of Service of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter forbid exactly what Score Assured demands) is a way to demonstrate "good character"?
No, it's probably in a museum.
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What part of "British Startup" made you think that the USA's constitutional amendments would have any relevance whatsoever?
"Our planning system mostly dates from the late 1960s and was designed to limit urban sprawl. That's getting very painful in light of the population growth we've seen over the last two decades, but the system has a powerful NIMBY lobby that defends it from any attempts at reform."
I don't think that's entirely fair, part the problem is that there are massive amounts of disused brownfield territory, but developers, despite making absolutely massive profits given the money in the housing market currently, have been lobbying to destroy greenfield natural sites to build upon, because it's cheaper for them than knocking down old disused buildings, or ripping up old foundations, pipework etc. from disused ex-industrial sites.
The fact is that there is more than enough disused brownfield land to solve for the UK's housing crisis many times over. People aren't rejecting building on greenfield sites because of NIMBYism, they're rejecting it because it's simply unnecessary and because people would rather see ghastly unused ex-industrial areas turned into shiny new housing developments than they would pristine natural areas turned into shiny new housing developments.
I don't think we should be destroying our argicultural and natural landscapes just because it's cheaper for property developers to build on fresh land than it is to tidy up old industrial areas. If we allow them to do that then we still end up with tatty old industrial areas that look awful, bring down the value of an area, and increase crime as a result whilst destroying nice argicultural or recreational area needlessly.
I think most people would be more than happy with building on these old sites, because it raises the value of an area for people already living around. It's win-win for everyone except property developers who make on slightly less massive profits.
This isn't to say that there aren't legislative changes that can be made to improve the housing situation, there are, an obvious one being that anyone not using land they own that is disused but could be regenerated sould be forced to sell it of or regenerate it themselves rather than sit on it simply in the hope of profiting off the increases in land value at some arbitrary point in the future even though it adds to the artificial land scarcity and brings down the value of an area, but we don't need to make it easier to build on green belt, we already have way more than enough unprotected land to satisfy the country's building needs long into the future. We just need to make sure it's used sensibly.
NO business would "chew their arm off" to use this if the end result was no new customers
When your potential customers like to set up meth labs or are just generally scummy assholes that will have no regard for your property or other residents, yeah, they would.
Sorry, but this is why criminal background checks, credit checks, and deposits exist. I highly doubt social media sleuthing is going to flush out a meth dealer. Regardless, the answer here isn't to treat everyone like a criminal. The answer here is harsher punishments against actual criminals.
"What is worrying me is that I can't immediately see why this would be illegal under current data protection law in England and Wales"
There are two reasons, first, that I have covered elsewhere, is that they're providing a credit score. This is a regulated industry by the FCA, and they're not registered as a financial services company with the FCA for this purpose. Registering imposes certain requirements on them, such as being able to justify how they came to a credit score. If they're using artificial intelligence/statistical techniques as they claim to determine credit score from social media data then it's near impossible to fulfil this obligation because retracing how and why such systems came up with the score they did on an individual basis is damn near impossible, it just doesn't give the auditability required for FCA compliance, and they're not FCA registered anyway.
From a non-financial aspect in terms of the DPA, the DPA states that an organisation cannot capture more data than is necessary for the purposes of their business. Given that their business is effectively evaluating people by capturing social media data, and that some of that data will be inherently irrelevant to determining trust, but that they're relying on statistical algorithms to figure out which data is and isn't valid, as well as including data that they're simply not even legally allowed to use as a determination (gender, sex, sexuality) then it seems pretty clear that they're not in compliance with the DPA. Perhaps most damingly is the fact that upon loading a post onto their own systems, or a picture, they may be capturing data of other people. If a person being evaluated posts "£50k to blow at Joe Bloggs 30th Birthday on Friday!" then they've already taken data illegaly about Joe Bloggs - his name, his birthday, and his age. No individual can ever give permission to a company to harvest another individual's data in this way.
The reason the big boys in this industry haven't done any of this is precisely because it's an unnavigable minefield. When you start introducing non-deterministic algorithms into the fray, with data that can be so arbitrary such as social media posts, there is absolutely no way whatsoever you can guarantee that your system is not going to discriminate based on sex, race, religion, and so on and so forth. It only takes one case where someone suggests that their race, or sex, or sexuality or similar has been taken into account creating bias in the outcome, for that data to be stored on the company's system (which it is, see the example profile) and for the company not to be able to prove otherwise for the whole system to be shut down as non-compliant and for a fine to be issued.
You're right in that there's nothing to stop an organisation harvesting data about an individual that they've been given permission to harvest by that individual, but as soon as you start doing evaluation on that data in a non, or effectively non-deterministic manner, and when that data can include personal information about others then you're going to cross the line.
But again, in this case, they've outright failed on their FCA obligations alone before you even factor that in so regardless this company is not fulfilling their legal obligations.
The cost of brown field site development is one issue, but not really the major one. My wife has worked on a number of building refurbishments (they are extremely common in London), and they are not that difficult, expensive, or slow to complete vs new builds. Indeed, the cost of land is so high in London now, that it shouldn't make a difference anyway. Provided the cost of cleaning up the brownfield site is less than the greenfield equivalent value, the development still makes economic sense.
Rather, the main problem is that there is virtually no cost to just sitting on land in the UK. Property rates are incredibly low, and there is no land tax. For many properties now, rent would barely cover depreciation and management fees, so it is simpler to just leave the property empty. Similarly, why go to all the risk of building housing on an empty site when this makes you maybe 1/10 of the money you are making from annual capital gains. Doing actual construction has much more risk than doing nothing, and the returns are unlikely to be worth having to deal with contractors and suppliers.
Just visit the ghost streets of the west end, or Stratford (which 3 years on from the olympics is still releasing housing at a glacial pace) to see how this all works.
The London market is fundamentally being squeezed by land banking. The way to fix it would be with a tax on the unimproved value of land, with the proceeds used to build social housing, but the trouble the govt has now is that enough middle class people are tangled up in potential negative equity situations that they cannot let the bubble collapse.
My pick is a sterling crisis, and the BoE being forced to raise rates to defend the currency. This will wipe out all the middle class hanger-ons, clearing the way for a democratic re-adjustment of the land usage system.
And still flashing 12:00:00.
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?
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