News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by matte_black on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:20AM (#16706362)
If a credit company doesn't know who you are they will not loan you even one dollar. If an insurance company doesn't know who you are they will charge you the maximum to account for the risk. If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health. Still want to play this game?
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by jacquesm on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:21AM (#16706378)
If a credit card company or health company relies on a social media entity to decide whether to give you credit or to be able to accurately diagnose your health then they have other problems.

None of that needs Facebook.

Still want to play this game?

Credit card companies were extending people credit and doctors were making accurate diagnoses long before the internet came along, they are definitely not a necessity for the functioning of society in ways that really matter.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by matte_black on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:29AM (#16706427)
Can you say that with any certainty? You don't know what you can do with data really until you have it all available at your disposal.
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by jacquesm on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:37AM (#16706472)
Yes, I can say that with certainty. Anything a credit card company will do when they have access to aggregate data is done to benefit the credit card company, not the customers. And anything healthcare providers can do when it comes to making diagnoses is either on an individual basis, in which case access to my social media data would not matter or it is part of a study in which case there should be proper controls.

If you wish to argue that there are direct benefits to consumers from either giving credit card companies or health care providers access to your social media data then the the onus is on you to prove this.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by matte_black on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:45AM (#16706527)
The onus isn't on me to prove anything. The OP was against harvesting of data in all forms, not just social media.

That means no credit, insurance, or health related data collection of any kind at all.

What do you think of that?

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by Thriptic on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:14AM (#16706689)
That's not how I read OP's comment. I interpreted it as people should not be aggregating data to make decisions about you without your informed consent. Credit companies should be using only the data I provide them in questionnaire form to make decisions; health insurers should only be using my health record to make decisions. They should not be using my social media profile, purchasing history, location data, conversations, pictures, associations etc which I agree with.
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by jacquesm on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:02AM (#16706614)
Your thesis is that without credit, insurance or health data collection those entities will not be able to function.

The world is a lot larger than just the United States and in other places banks, insurance companies and healthcare providers function just fine even if they do not have the data gathering capabilities that are considered 'normal' in the United States.

So there's what I think of 'that', data collection is not a pre-requisite for any of this.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by ameister14 on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:44AM (#16706962)
Easy access to credit the way it runs in the US isn't universal, and most places it is are currently dealing with the same data collection issues.

Partitioning the data and more heavily regulating the credit industry may be part of a solution.

Where do healthcare providers function well with less data than those in the US? I'm not experienced enough with the healthcare industry and nationalization of healthcare data to know, so if you have examples I'd really appreciate it.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by jacquesm on Thursday March 29, 2018 @12:25PM (#16708320)
The US is about as bad as it gets when it comes to healthcare. Good examples for healthcare run in a way that it does not break the bank and provides a high level of care are Canada and France, other Western European countries to greater or lesser degree depending on how much privatization has been going on.
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by ameister14 on Thursday March 29, 2018 @06:38PM (#16711804)
Sure, as far as money is concerned - what about data collection and management, though? Isn't that what we were talking about?
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by jellicle on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:22AM (#16706763)
The credit, insurance, and health industries predate data harvesting by 1000s of years.
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by ajross on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:53AM (#16706564)
Seems to me like we're where we are now precisely becuase we've learned what can be done with all that data, and we don't like it.

Your whole argument is based on a misdirected premise anyway. In fact credit reporting and health care are very heavily regulated industries in terms of how that data is stored and what can be done with it. Facebook saw no such regulation, and look where we are.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by wmeredith on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:24AM (#16706779)
Yes. Banks and insurance were around long before Facebook, like by 1000 years. I can’t tell if you’re being serious or putting us on.
Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by philipodonnell on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:44AM (#16706959)
This is just untrue. In the absence of more specific data, companies with risk-based pricing will price at a rough median within whatever ranges they can establish so that everyone pays the same while still being somewhat profitable for the insurer. They were doing this for hundreds of years before Facebook came along.

More data allows price discrimination so that some people pay more than others, which we tend to think of as good when its based on things like age in life insurance, but which we tend to think of as bad when its based on things like race in life insurance. These companies have repeatedly shown they are unable to self-limit themselves to only considering things we think of as good, and price discrimination is almost never beneficial for consumers in practice, so its worth having a conversation about whether they should be able to consider data like that at all.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by athenot on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:32AM (#16706852)
> If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health.

The only health companies that diagnose are providers. They have been explicitely REJECTING patient-generated data for the longest time because of concerns about poor data. Are your blood-pressure cuff, scale, thermometers, etc. calibrated and regularly tested? Did you take the measures properly? Etc. Now some of that caution is excessive and we're starting to see bridges where patient-generated data is being considered.

But by and large, providers don't want crappy data. Even claims data sent to insurance companies are known to be fudged/imprecise/incorrect and aren't relied on for clinical decision. Even for population health that data is bad (some PH vendors still tried to rely on it but that turned out to be a bad idea).

So Facebook data has zero value to most providers.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by dragonwriter on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:38AM (#16706914)
> The only health companies that diagnose are providers. They have been explicitely REJECTING patient-generated data for the longest time because of concerns about poor data.

Patient-generated data, both objective and subjective, is frequently relied on by providers for diagnosis (and always has been); where available, provider-collected data is preferred and more heavily weighted in the event of direct contradiction, but providers simply have no practical choice but to rely on patient-generated data.

> Even claims data sent to insurance companies are known to be fudged/imprecise/incorrect and aren't relied on for clinical decision.

Well, yeah, since the provider making the clinical decision provides that data after the fact, of course they aren't going to rely on it. Even if it was perfectly accurate, they would use their own source data from which data would later be extracted selectively to support claims.

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by athenot on Thursday March 29, 2018 @09:57AM (#16707077)
Patient-generated data that's been obtained by a clinician interviewing a patient is one thing. I'm referring to patients generating their own data and uploading it into the EHR of their provider.

> Well, yeah, since the provider making the clinical decision provides that data after the fact, of course they aren't going to rely on it.

That hasn't stopped some population health vendors to try to sell products that use claims data to build PH assessment tools. And yes that works about as well as you'd expect. :)

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by 87812487 on Thursday March 29, 2018 @11:05AM (#16707623)
Facebook data is not necessary real, or updated. Me as an example, I have a facebook account which have a fake birthday and never updated my profile data after high school. I still add new friends and communicate on facebook, but I don't interest to add new demographic information in my profile.

What it means is insurance company or credit company does not explicit state how do they use my data to evaluate my price on certain insurance or credit to mortgage. If I applied for mortgage. By some random parameters in the model, I may be deemed not credible to have a mortgage. And I don't even have real profile data except my name, photos, and posts.

On the other side, if some insider knows what parameter contribute success mortgage, they can game the model by adding fake information to the facebook profile, or even sell this information for profit.

Facebook by no mean represent real identity, although it usually does. I don't think it is fair to use facebook information without consent from customer.

I am interested that if facebook states that using facebook will affect your credit history, how many people will still willing to use it?

Re:Facebook Will Cut Off Access to Third Party Data for Ad T... by wu-ikkyu on Thursday March 29, 2018 @08:32AM (#16706445)
Sounds like you're suggesting we should implement a citizen social credit system based on social media data?