A recent article was posted about how insurance companies are rating your activity on social media, in order to scoop about their customers and what their data-miners find may soon be compiled into a new way to rate you as a risk: a social networking score.
These software tools are being used to track data from social media website
s such as twitter, facebook and other websites. Insurers already use a credit score system to assign customers into the risk box, however that score can now be used to credit a social networking score.
An executive of watchdog has responded to this by saying “Data mining sweeps the internet collating public data about what you like and say and where you go online and use that info to create a social media score.” Also saying “they’ll use that to decide how much to charge or whether or not to sell insurance to an individual based on that."
There is no question that at least some insurance companies already use the Internet and social media as part of their underwriting and/or claims handling process. Therefore consumers will need to be careful of what they post on their social networking sites. Online presence is very important nowadays; as we don’t know what companies could be viewing your detailed statuses.
Online data has also been used to dispute claims. There are numerous cases reported where someone has claimed to be disabled (a back injury suffered on the job, for example), but a social media posting contains pictures of them dancing or engaging in other strenuous, recreational activity," says Fitzgerald.
However the social media could also increase your chances of getting good insurance quotes, for example if you “check in” at health clubs, and write about your exercise routines on statuses, shows you care about your health and eager to look after yourself, which therefore gives good news to life insurers who be happy to insure you.
To summarise your activity on social networking sites could put yourself in danger of getting charged with high premiums. Companies will filter the network to find out how customers are living there lives, and whether they get scored into the high risk box.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/12/12/what-insurers-could-do-with-your-social-media-score/
http://vator.tv/news/2011-11-21-how-social-media-is-changing-laws-investigations
I feel that the idea to charge insurance based upon our social networking activity is an unfair ploy and scheme to, as you mentioned, charge us a high premium on our health insurance. This is an unjust way to assess the way in which we are charged insurance, because the information we post online has no source or foundation. For all we know it could be entirely fabricated.
ReplyDeleteMany users of Facebook (like myself) have been a victim of Facebook ‘raping’, or ‘Frape.’ Consequently, for a decision that is highly important to someone fiscally, mentally and physically, to be based upon an erroneous status or photo-shopped picture seems to be awfully contentious. Furthermore, providing check-ins to healthy institutes (gym) and writing a status promoting one’s health and general well-being appears to be a good idea, but once again this is unfounded, as I could ‘check-in’ at gym without stepping one foot inside, or post that I am eating a salad, when in reality I’m consuming an unhealthy burger, but reap the benefits of cheaper insurance. Whereas, a terminally ill person, for example, could post or tweet on their profile that unfortunately they’re having a bad day in regards to their health. As a consequence for posting this status their insurance could be revoked or they could be charged a higher premium for treatment, as their deterioration in health is knowledge for insurance companies to exploit.
Thus, I believe insurance quotations should be based on substantial and clear evidence/facts, instead of unfounded comments and pictures. However, I know people may have a differing view to this.
That’s a valid point. Facebook allows you to be creative in your own ways. People could be posting about their check-ins at gyms even though they never have gone in their life, just to avoid potential insurances using that against them. But my overall judgement on this would be that insurances shouldn’t based there potential high premiums to the fact that members are highly uninsurable because of they are living there lives. This again expresses the issues on privacy on the internet, and how social networking is being used as a possible spy for companies.
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