from Hacker News

Admiral to price car insurance based on Facebook posts

by r0h1n on 11/2/16, 8:50 AM with 50 comments

  • by iwillreply on 11/2/16, 11:03 AM

  • by herghost on 11/2/16, 10:17 AM

    It's interesting because they clearly believe they have workable actuarial data to support this, so in many ways good on them for using the data that's available.

    On the other hand, based on the examples given, it seems this is going to penalise people using language incorrectly - which I would assume can be strongly correlated with poor education. So on that basis, they're going to be saying that poor people are worse drivers and so must pay more? Is that ok?

    But the biggest upshot of this whole thing is that suddenly there is a potential for real world financial consequences for what people write online. This is a game changer - and one I would imagine Facebook should be quite worried about.

    I hope it triggers the start of a general awakening of the people when it comes to the impact of data overshare.

  • by bitJericho on 11/2/16, 10:12 AM

    From the article: "The scheme is voluntary, and will only offer discounts rather than price increases, which could be worth up to £350 a year. However, Admiral has not ruled out expanding firstcarquote."

    This is not a discount for courteous people. What this is is collection of personal data for advertising and data collection (to be resold) and a good way to advertise to people's friends.

    And 350 a year? I'll believe it when I see it.

  • by faitswulff on 11/2/16, 1:43 PM

    In the sidebar: "Facebook forces Admiral to pull plan to price car insurance based on posts"

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/02/facebook-admir...

    > Facebook said protecting the privacy of its users was of the utmost importance to it and it had clear guidelines about how information obtained from the site should be used.

    > Section 3.15 of Facebook’s platform policy states that the social media site’s data should not be used to “make decisions about eligibility, including whether to approve or reject an application or how much interest to charge on a loan”.

    Well, that didn't last long.

  • by martin-adams on 11/2/16, 11:17 AM

    This to me feels like a step in data privacy that I do not like. Why not issue health insurance based on Google searches?

    While it's voluntary, it may be seen as ok. But what happens if you opt not to do anything on social media and you end up with a premium penalty, or worse, refusal to be insured. This happens today when applying for a mortgage. If you've never taken a loan and had no credit history, they have no data to score you against.

    I would prefer a mechanism that analysed people's driving behaviour to assess risk, not what I like on Facebook.

  • by teekert on 11/2/16, 11:40 AM

    "You will only get discounts"

    Yeah right, that is not how insurance works. The cost per year for an insurance company is relatively stable and simply the chance a person crashes * the average cost of a crash * the amount of people insured. The other customers, without FB or who use a lot of exclamation marks will thus pay for a higher amount of the total costs. This gives them an incentive to go to a fair insurance company.

  • by newscracker on 11/2/16, 11:28 AM

    Won't this cause people to game the system to get discounts? I'm sure once people learn more about the internals (some of which have been revealed in the article), they could change their online behavior (not necessarily offline) to make it more suited to what gets a better value for them. Or they could even have multiple accounts - one to show a good face to such companies and another that's a personal account (even though this is not in line with Faceboook's ToS). This in turn could mean that the company would be relying on curated and made up information to make decisions.

  • by crottypeter on 11/2/16, 10:31 AM

  • by untilHellbanned on 11/2/16, 10:03 AM

    And there goes FB's business model. Nobody is going to post anything once people realize their money is at stake. This seems like a good opportunity for a new friends and family social network.

  • by MasterScrat on 11/2/16, 12:19 PM

    Is it possible that some insurance company are already doing such things without the customers knowing?

    Are there laws that require insurance pricing to be transparent?

  • by sickbeard on 11/2/16, 12:54 PM

    Having a "social media" account seems more like a pita than it's actually worth.

  • by throwaway98237 on 11/2/16, 1:44 PM

    When I gave up FB a good while ago I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing. Many thought I was being paranoid. As the months roll by I feel nore and more vindicated.

  • by dazc on 11/2/16, 10:17 AM

    I think it's a positive innovation since young people are currently assumed to be a very high risk, deservedly so in many cases but not all.

  • by walshemj on 11/2/16, 11:56 AM

    Also discriminates against dyslexics.

  • by fredley on 11/2/16, 9:36 AM

    Good. Hopefully this will make people more aware of the consequences of what they share on the internet. With the IP bill in parliament at the moment looking set to pass with minor amendments, this could not be more timely.