CASPIAN - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering. [Privacy Digest]
Breaking news:
RFID is on the way!
RFID tags, tiny tracking devices the size of a grain of dust that can be inserted in virtually any product, are about to enter the retail world.
Industry insider comes clean
Insurance companies seek card data
THE CASPIAN mailbox always makes for interesting reading, and we thought you might enjoy an excerpt from one email that was recently sent to us. The writer, who wished to remain anonymous, was employed in software development and worked on a data mining system to be used with card programs. The most interesting comments concern other businesses that were closely watching the project:
[...] one of my jobs was to wow potential customers. I had to take them through my data center and development labs and show them our stuff. The usual suspects were there - various marketers and database mongers. But the most interesting were the reps from the insurance companies. we had a BUNCH of 'em."
The reason they were interested is that they wanted to collect lifestyle information on people so that individuals can be charged according to their lifestyles. "We see that you eat too much red meat so your life insurance will be higher than the norm". "We see that you've bought a lot of electrical supplies which means you're doing unauthorized electrical work on your house. Therefore we're canceling your homeowners policy." that kind of stuff.
He goes on to predict that the companies will publicly deny this, especially since it would be difficult to prove their involvement at this stage. Then he makes this astute observation:
Once stored in a database, data has a nasty habit of not ever going away so even if they don't do something in the near future, all this data is out there just waiting to be exploited.
Consumers should also keep in mind that It doesn't matter how "innocent" a purchase might be; when twisted in whatever manner is to the benefit of someone else it can come back to haunt you.
Friday, February 21, 2003
