There’s an alarming new trend to aggregate detail dossiers based on your internet usage from targeted advertising which is now being sold to health insurers.
Based on public individual information, your health insurance policy premium could rise based on what you have shared online across Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Technology can also capture behaviour based on what users click on across websites, helping companies find out your location, gender and age group, often through placing cookies on users’ web browsers.
Since most insurance policies rely on the information customers provide them with, they have cleverly utilised this emerging trend. So uploadingphotos of yourself at bars, snaps of your food and signs of smoking could raise red flags on your unhealthy diet. But could portraying a healthy lifestyle mean your insurance premium will decrease? We’d be surprised!
Chief technical adviser of MYOB and Futurist, Simon Raik-Allen, believes digital profiles will only become more accurate as technology advances.
“The world produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day. That’s enough to fill 10 million Blu-ray discs,” he told News.com.au.
“AI and machine learning eats this type of data for breakfast and is getting much better at incorporating algorithms to mine for specific information.”
So perhaps it’s time to do a health check up on your public social media profiles and install an ad-blocker.