Re:Edward Snowden’s Privacy Tips: “Get Rid of Dropbox,” Avoi...
by dahart on Saturday October 11, 2014 @09:20PM
(#8443976)
How about a more mundane example?
A friend who worked for an analytics agency once told me that insurance companies are very interested in having access to the purchasing histories of their subscribers.
We speculated why, and among several possibilities, we figured the most likely and obvious is this: what happens when you get cancer or have a heart attack at 72 and your insurance company denies all your medical claims citing the entire volume of ice cream, pork, beer, coffee and diet coke you've consumed in your life? Or cite all your family and friends that smoke, even though you don't?
I make what I think are quite responsible choices with my health, but that conversation has stuck with me as an example of how information about me, information I'm not trying to 'hide', information that I didn't consider especially 'private', might be used against me at some point in the future.
A friend who worked for an analytics agency once told me that insurance companies are very interested in having access to the purchasing histories of their subscribers.
We speculated why, and among several possibilities, we figured the most likely and obvious is this: what happens when you get cancer or have a heart attack at 72 and your insurance company denies all your medical claims citing the entire volume of ice cream, pork, beer, coffee and diet coke you've consumed in your life? Or cite all your family and friends that smoke, even though you don't?
I make what I think are quite responsible choices with my health, but that conversation has stuck with me as an example of how information about me, information I'm not trying to 'hide', information that I didn't consider especially 'private', might be used against me at some point in the future.