The life insurance industry is considering a system of
basing insurance rates off of data collected by the iPhone. With new
technologies, information like heart rate, time spent asleep, and blood
pressure can be monitored right through your smartphone. The auto insurance
industry is doing something similar. Using the same technologies, insurance
companies can already measure speed, location, and miles driven in your car in
real time. While this new technology is exciting, it also brings up a whole new
wave of questions about information privacy and the risks associated with
disclosing this kind of information.
Life insurance companies already use information like age,
occupation, and whether or not you’re a smoker to make decisions on insurance
costs, so it comes as no surprise that this potential new stream of information
would be extremely valuable. However, just like all valuable information, if it
ends up in the wrong hands it can be detrimental. With recent hacks of large
companies like Home Depot and Target leading to massive financial information
loss, it’s extremely hard for me to believe that insurance companies are immune
from hackers.
It’s one thing to lose your credit card information and have
to get a card reissued, but a completely different story to lose information
like your most frequented location, roads most traveled, and sleep schedule. Imagine
a robber getting ahold of your exact daily schedule and location at all times
of the day, or a foreign government getting access to this information about an
important person. It would be simple to go to someone’s house and rob it or for
a foreign government to plan an assassination. Not to mention the NSA’s
greediness for information that would most likely lead to them taking this
information for whatever purpose they felt necessary regardless of the legality.
What this all really boils down to is the question of where do
we draw the line on collecting information and are we ready for this kind of
innovation. With recent occurrences like the fappening, financial hacks, as
well as the recently discovered bash exploit mentioned in Allan Zimmer’s blog post,
I believe the answer to both those question are no. It is true that we are in a
new era of computing and information collection, but the key word is ‘new’.
Technology is evolving at such a rapid rate that we need to give it a chance to
settle down before pushing forward with so much innovation. Encryption and the
internet are too young to handle this information with the sensitivity required
for it to be commonly collected and stored.
Furthermore, I believe the answer to this problem is some
kind of information security standard. Our current method for information
transfer has been working great, but the problem comes from the systems that
keep this information not storing it well enough. Perhaps once the new wave
of Computer Science and Cyber Security majors enter the workforce we’ll have
enough brainpower to conquer this immense challenge. Until then, we should keep
basing our insurance rates on the
information we have.
Sources:
How iPhone apps could impact your insurance, By: James O'Toole
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