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Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

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Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#51
post #10

One interviewee had a credit card in a fake name. How legal is that exactly?

I don't see why it would be a problem. People use different names on credit cards all the time. They get married, or divorced (after taking their spouse's name), without changing names on their credit cards, use their middle name as their first name, use nicknames, etc. I doubt banks care as long as you use your legitimate SSN and pay your bills.

On financial accounts where you have assets, I wouldn't want to use an unofficial name. If there's a dispute they could claim that you're not the owner, and you risk losing the assets.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#52

"Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar." Top 1% of the super paranoid indeed. While I understand the reach of the government and the lengths they'll go to gain information - this article is absolutely ridiculous to me. I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break.

The article had examples of what they do now. It's not a stretch that the rest can happen soon.

Things should not have been allowed to get here.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're buying alcohol for a party. Or all that fatty food you purchased on your credit card was because you get shopping for a friend. But the anonymous algorithms won't know this, and you will pay for their assumptions. How is that fair? It's little relief to me if these systems are only mostly correct.

You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior. And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willf…

The flip side of that is that people who don't provide that information are going to be grouped into a pool of relatively high risk people and be forced to pay higher bills. And the incentives line up such that, if you're better than the average non-sharer of personal information, you'll be significantly better off switching to being a sharer, which in turn increases the risk profile of the remaining non-sharers. And the cycle repeats until no one can afford not to share all their information.

And the same cycle will push insurance companies further and further into your personal life. Oh, you play video games a couple hours a week? That's $15 extra/month. Oh, you prefer watching football to watching the Wire? We'll ring you up for $5 extra/month. You're gay, that's $10/month. You married a person with an above average BMI? Well, that puts you into a higher risk profile, you'll see the charge on your next bill. Look, Aetna's new monthly offer: a purely voluntary opportunity for you to lower your insurance bill by up to 30%, just by installing a chip into the base of your skull and video cameras throughout your home, all paid for by the Company!

And the insurance companies that don't do this will face higher costs and lower profitability, eventually pushing them out of the market.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#54

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like th…

Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%? I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're…

OP did increase their liability. But do we want to track right and wrong down to that level? Do we want to be that uptight and excruciating? When society's systems get too efficient the potential for tyranny gets get ever higher. Compare efficient colonizers like the English vs sloppy ones like the Spanish. Indigenous groups are far more of a presence in the countries where the latter ruled vs the former. That's not an accident. The weak administrative skills of the Spanish authorities gave enough space for the natives to not be completely boxed in, even though in general they could be more unjust than English colonial governments. Inefficiency is a safety valve, it gives hope when real justice can't be found. The injustice here being not being part of a proper health care risk pool the way the citizens in every other civilized country are.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#55

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like th…

Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%? I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're…

> Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%?

If people with lower risks didn't pay for people with higher risks, there'd be no insurance market.

If you can perfectly predict what's going to happen to someone - and you charge them all exactly what it's going to cost, + your overheads, then there's no reason they should buy insurance rather than putting the money into an investment plan. Actually they'd probably be better off with the investment plan.

Insurance is like gambling, what does the insurance company know that you don't? What do you know that they don't? If they get really good at predicting your health, then being accepted for an insurance scheme would be a really strong argument to do something else with your money.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#56
> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them,"

This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on every photo?

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#57

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like th…

Idea: services that intentionally fuzz up your data. You pay them a certain fee and they make purchases for goods, entertainment, etc. in subtle ways (credit card purchases). You are aware at all times what was purchased by "you." These purchases would not show up in a way to the general public (i.e., people you know), but is the type of thing that credit agencies, insurance companies, etc., might datamine for. Mess…

Interesting.

One issue I can see is that the service would likely provide tell-tale signs of it being used, either because of implementation flaws or just having a totally fuzzy purchasing pattern is itself a very distinct indicator. Insurance companies could then run risk profiles on people who use that kind of service, and it's possible/likely that users of that service would be unhealthier than average, resulting in higher premiums. Then the most healthy users of the service would face strong incentives to not use it, which further drives up its associated risk.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#58
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior. And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willf…

The flip side of that is that people who don't provide that information are going to be grouped into a pool of relatively high risk people and be forced to pay higher bills. And the incentives line up such that, if you're better than the average non-sharer of personal information, you'll be significantly better off switching to being a sharer, which in turn increases the risk profile of the remaining non-sharers. And…

Is this what happens today with car insurance? I don't think that's the case. Insurance companies offer "good driver discounts" all the time. What's the difference?

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#59

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like th…

How terrifying will it be when the government is the sole provider of said insurance with IRS enforcement of its rules? It will be like the NYC BigGulp ban on a ridiculous scale.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%? I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're…

> Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%? If people with lower risks didn't pay for people with higher risks, there'd be no insurance market. If you can perfectly predict what's going to happen to someone - and you charge them all exactly what it's going to cost, + your overheads, then there's no reason they should buy insurance rather than putting the money into an investment plan. Actua…

It's a spectrum, not a boolean value. Insurance companies will never get to 100% omniscience, that's silly. Nor will lower-risk people pay so little as to not offer an incentive for insurance to exist. Lower risk is not no risk.

Today the concept I'm talking about already exists in the form of good driver incentives, so the outcome you're predicting is already not how this plays out.

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