Been buying too much sugar? Dental insurance up. Too much butter? Health insurance up. Bought three times the median amount of headache tablets? That's a paddlin'. Bought more alcohol than normal? Car insurance up.

Opt out to keep off their radar? They assume the worst and charge you double?

Thinking from first principles lets us see incentives and probable outcomes before they are "substantiated" (adopted by the media).

I personally don't think shopper data is affecting insurance policies quite yet. But the groundwork is there (Acxiom etc), and the "great" thing about data is it stays around forever!

I'd guess a timeframe of 10 years, but does it really matter as to when?

Is this a response to my comment? I would guess that the answer is "nothing but the temporary protection of the law", but, assuming that protection is eventually revoked, it makes it all the more worrisome for me to have a random stranger's data taken as my own.