Yes, regulations on insurance pricing factors and on use of personal data.
Your solution is worse than the problem.
Does it make sense to ask "Why is fascism bad?". At a philosophical level it makes sense to ask this, but most of us would agree that freedom is desirable, because it allows people to develop their life project and be happy, while allowing other people to be happy (or at least try to be). Fascism is the totally opposite of freedom, therefore most of agree that fascism is bad.
Is there a good reason to undermine freedom in this case? I don't think so.
Some people may find that giving up their privacy for convenience is worth it, others, like me, would think the opposite, but we individually make the decision to use or not use Google, Facebook, etc. "Being taken advantage" is subjective.
Even if it was generally considered to be "malicious" and "being taken advantage of", you're arbitrarily twisting the rules of the game, to favor one group of people (the "users") and impair others (those that create the service). You may say: Yeah, but those being impaired already have millions of dollars and those being "protected" are good people. So, you decide who is "good people" and whose freedom doesn't matter? Should millionaires have less rights than poor people? Laws should correct for the amount of money/power people have, is that fair? I don't think so.
> Limiting freedom is bad unless you have a very good reason to do so.
The argument that they should be free to do so because otherwise we are otherwise limiting freedom is not convicing. Consider, for a moment, whether we have a right to privacy. Restricting person A from violating the rights of person B is generally not considered a limit on the freedom of person A. For instance, we generally do not talk about laws against theft limiting the freedom of a person to take whatever they want. If we do not have a right to privacy, then preserving privacy may still be a "very good reason" to limit such freedom.
> Some people may find that giving up their privacy for convenience is worth it, others, like me, would think the opposite, but we individually make the decision to use or not use Google, Facebook, etc. "Being taken advantage" is subjective.
Most people do not realize they are giving their privacy away or if they do, do not realize the extent of it. Privacy policies are intentionally obfuscated (and these public policies only exist because of regulation). People have expectations of how their data will be handled and PR departments do their best to suggest that their expectations align with reality, but theose expecations are never aligned with reality.
Even if this is how it actually worked, it would only work that way until it no longer works that way. Eventually you may find yourself uninsurable if you refuse to install a tracking device in your vehicle.
If you want the lower rate, you let them track you with the app. If you don't, you call up Geico or whatever and let them decide based on your age and zip code.
Chrome Sync has nothing to do with this.
I also think all of us are terrible at determining the value of our privacy and it's an asset we don't miss until it's gone. It's for that reason that I think the sale of privacy is something we can't leave up to unregulated industry because not all parties have good information on the goods they are exchanging.
So, if an insurer can identify that you have a greater risk than your friend, in perfect competition you would pay a higher rate. No insurer with perfect knowledge of risk would allow you to pay less than that, because they’re expected return would be negative.
In that case the companies will compete to give you competitive yet higher than others quotes to YOU(as they can see).
It's not about "lack of ability to advertise", it's about someone being able to heavily manipulate the perceived availability of competition (which is much more important than the real availability of competition). And that someone is the same someone that helps the companies manipulate the price (hint: it's Google).
Is there a way you could prevent this? Yes, if you care about privacy and not let someone build that database in the first place.
It's not only/always the NSA that we need to worry about.. You can already see this in some sense. A flight ticket could cost more if you look for it using a Mac instead of a PC. The road to creepy data mess is not that far.