The “Database You”
Saturday, January 1st, 2011 at
4:42 pm
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“Increase in health insurance rates for the top Vertical feet “winners” on Epicmix by rewarding their “risky behavior”.”
Anything to sell more Ski Pass Defenders huh. You are really reaching now… Just making stuff up.
Thank you for the comment.
You are correct that I did make that up, it was an example of what I see happening. Epicmix has been working for a week, it is new. The companies using this data will still need to develop the metric for pricing, but I believe they will incorporated into risk groups. Is this really so difficult for you to see? American Express is a corporate partner of VR and ASC, and MetLife has come on board to offer employee services for VR. Can you see where this is going?
Several health/life insurance companies use similar metrics and work these metrics into their insurance pricing. Your Kroger/Grocery Card can be used for similar purposes. Does a person buy 3 cartons of Cigs and and 3 bags of potato chips per week? “Interesting, they didn’t write that down on their life insurance application.” Some insurance companies use your credit score for premium pricing. What I am saying is that an individual data point is not important in itself, but many points create a picture which can be modeled.
As for selling more Ski Pass Defenders, I see a need. You can use tin foil if you like. However, the topic of “Database You” goes far beyond RFID shielding.
This was a great read – I’ll agree with the first commenter that the health insurance example does sound like a stretch, but to be quite fair it is not beyond plausible: if the information is out there, if they can mine it and make statistically valid inferences about different populations from that data, and if there is money being left on the table then they will eventually use that data “against you”.
RFID is a great technology but I don’t think we should have to go to these kinds of measures to try and protect our personal information, I’m sure they are working on some kind of encryption but I guess until then this wallet looks like the best way to protect your card details