7 ms·

You are your phone

68 points by tmbsundar 11y ago

Vraxx 11y ago
Honestly this is the type of thing that motivates me to care about privacy. Arguing against "Why should I care if I don't do anything wrong" never seems like it has an impact on either side of the argument, but this type of data analysis shows very vividly that you can be impacted by this data gathering in very meaningful ways even if you aren't doing anything traditionally thought of as wrong. The even scarier part of this is that these are patterns of borderline subconscious behavior that can "determine" certain traits about you. Before, worrying about posting uncouth content on social media is a very conscious worry/action that you take when representing yourself of the internet. Micromanaging my phone behaviors sounds much more tedious and burdensome.
- scholia 11y ago
  > Micromanaging my phone behaviors sounds much more tedious and burdensome. Sounds impossible ;-) I'm sure conclusions can equally be drawn from the way people try to micromanage their phone behaviors....
  - Vraxx 11y ago
    Yeah, I guess "fruitless nightmare" more aptly describes my feelings for the idea of micromanaging my phone behaviors. Either way, I think this kind of data extrapolation is a lot more likely to get people who don't normally care about privacy violations to begin caring.
abruzzi 11y ago
While I think using this kind of data is a bad thing from a privacy perspective, the first thought I had reading this article was "what about minimal users?" Specifically people like me, I use my phone for phone and web. No social media, no texting. I probably use the phone 5-10 times a day, and mostly for very short time periods.* (Actually I also use it for a clock, but that doesn't take me past the lock screen, so I don't know if it counts.) So maybe there is a classification that you can determine for minimal users (and I doubt they all come from the same socio-economic group), but aside from GPS logging (which apple tells us the don't do) there are large gaps where they don't know if I'm filing bankruptcy or golfing at a $100k a year club. I know I'm in the quickly diminishing minority in the world, but if you build your business around using a trove of data that is not available for a subset of potential customers, do you bar them from becoming customers, or fall back to standard mechanisms? * The article mentions people under representing their usage, so I'll just add that my three year old iPhone 5S is usually at about 95% charge at the end of the day, and the only time I've seen it below 90% was during an extended trip outside, or at the border of reception areas.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Isn't that how credit and lending work to some extent? My credit history is relatively sparse but it used to be nearly nonexistent. My main source of credit history comes from using my Visa for typical monthly purchasing while paying it off every month. I don't have a car loan. I had a motorcycle loan that I only took because I wanted to build credit and could've easily just paid cash. Even getting that was a bit of a hassle and they only gave me the small loan (around $5000) because my income and expenses clearly showed I shouldn't have any issues paying for it. Outside of some minor low-interest student loan debt in the $10k range, I just don't have much history. If I wanted to get a better credit card or some other loan/line of credit, I'd have a harder time getting approved for decent terms because I simply don't like to deal with debt. Like you, this makes me a minority (or at least a less desirable customer for lenders). I'd imagine it's a similar case. Some might decline to do business with me. Others might offer worse terms. It's kinda unfortunate because in order to prove my creditworthiness, it would seem I need to do things that I consider less financially wise (take out car loans or other lines of credit to establish a record of paying them off).
  - cubano 11y ago
    I'm not an expert, but I do know paying off your total credit card debt every month does nothing to help your credit score and, in fact, may even kinda hurt it. You would be far better off to get 2-3 cards, ring up some debt on each of them, and then make the monthly minimum payment, on-time, for 6-12 months. For sure you would see a pretty big jump in your score doing that.
    - Vraxx 11y ago
      Source on that? I'd want to see some pretty convincing evidence before I'd even consider doing that. For starters you'll be paying interest by doing that, which I guess is a "good" quality from the lender's point of view, but I'm certainly not going to start forking over interest in hopes that it'll improve my credit score.
      - 11y ago
tantalor 11y ago
Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sTegRqoQDfsJ:www.roughtype.com/%3Fp%3D6683+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sTegRqo...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ignaces 11y ago
it died
- qntty 11y ago
  You are your phone The fact can no longer be avoided: You are your phone. The pattern of smartphone use is the pattern of the self. This is who you are: Barcode of smartphone use over two weeks.Black areas indicate times where the phone was in use and Saturdays are indicated with a red dashed line. Weekday alarm clock times (and snoozing) are clearly evident. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Silicon Valley lending startups are looking to base personal loan decisions on analyses of data from individuals’ phones. The apps running on a person’s device, entrepreneurs have found, “generate huge amounts of data — texts, emails, GPS coordinates, social-media posts, retail receipts, and so on — indicating thousands of subtle patterns of behavior that correlate with repayment or default.” How you use your phone reveals more than you think: Even obscure variables such as how frequently a user recharges the phone’s battery, how many incoming text messages they receive, how many miles they travel in a given day or how they enter contacts into their phone — the decision to add last name correlates with creditworthiness — can bear on a decision to extend credit. Meanwhile, the New York Times today reports on a new study published in Science that reveals how a person’s economic status can be determined through a fairly simple analysis of phone use. The researchers, working in Africa, collected details “about when calls were made and received and the length of the calls” as well as “when text messages were sent, and which cellphone towers the texts and calls were routed through.” They analyzed this metadata to “build an algorithm that predicts how wealthy or impoverished a given cellphone user is. Using the same model, the researchers were able to answer even more specific questions, like whether a household had electricity.” I am not a number, you declare. I am more than a credit score. You may well be. But the tell-tale phone reveals more than one’s financial standing and trustworthiness. The tell-tale phone reveals all. Take a look at that chart again: Barcode of smartphone use over two weeks.Black areas indicate times where the phone was in use and Saturdays are indicated with a red dashed line. Weekday alarm clock times (and snoozing) are clearly evident. It shows the pattern of one person’s smartphone use over a two-week period, beginning late on a Friday afternoon. Each vertical line represents a single use of the phone, the width of the line showing how long the use extended. The chart comes from a new study on phone use, published in PLOS ONE. Four UK researchers installed a usage-tracking app on the smartphones of twenty-three students and staff members at the University of Lincoln, and then examined the data after two weeks. They discovered that “a simple measure — recording when the phone is in use — can provide a vast array of information about an individual’s daily routine.” Data on phone use, to take a simple example, provides “a non-invasive indication of sleep length.” All but one of the test subjects used their phones as an alarm clock on weekdays, and all of them without exception reported that the last thing they do before going to sleep is to check their phone. Gaps in use during the day are also good indicators of naps. The test subjects used their phones more than five hours a day, on average. Much of that usage went on unconsciously, the researchers found. When the subjects were asked to estimate how often they checked their phone during a day, the average answer was 37 times. The tracking data revealed, however, that the subjects actually used their phones 85 times a day on average, more than twice as often as they thought. “For exploring checking behaviours,” the researchers report, “estimated number of uses show little reliability for measuring actual uses.” We see here how deeply entwined the phone has become with the self — a seamless extension of body, mind, and personality. It is so much a part of us that we are no more conscious of the device moment-to-moment than we are of, say, our hands. If the mere tracking of phone use reveals how we spend our days, our diurnal routines, imagine what would be revealed by a deeper analysis, one that examined the apps we use, the people we connect with, the things we look at and listen to, what we say and what we write and what we like, where we go, what we search for, the photos we take. It’s all there, public self and private self. There’s no shame in admitting the fact: You are your phone.
bambax 11y ago
We like to think we can find "secrets" by eavesdropping on private data and determining the creditworthiness of someone according to how they enter their contacts onto their address book. But I'm pretty sure the correlation between loans repayment and very public and easily accessible socio-economic data is much stronger than with those quirky behavioral traits, such as: where you live, did you attend / finish college, how you spell, do you have a job, are you married, etc.
fluxquanta 11y ago
Articles like this, coupled with my increasing dissatisfaction with how social media makes me feel and how my thought process throughout the day feels fractured, really make me want to give up my smartphone entirely. However, I can't bring myself to get over the fear and dread of being "disconnected". Is there anyone here who has given up their smartphone and has any advice on how you did it, and how you are now? Is it even possible to do so working in a tech field?
- lfowles 11y ago
  A good way to let go of the feeling of "being disconnected" is to measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself. That's basically how I toned down my facebook use, I realized I was skimming and got a few internal chuckles, but I never took action on anything I saw on there, whether it was to write happy birthday, comment on a photo I liked, or try some crafty DIY thing.
  - fluxquanta 11y ago
    > measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself I feel like, in general, something like facebook just makes my thoughts MORE negative in general. For instance, I'm a member of some groups for different hobbies, and I've adopted a "one strike and you're out" policy with regard to what people post to the group. If I find a post to be irrelevant to the topic at hand or in any way annoying -- boom, "Ignore all posts from [user]". I'm saying to myself, "Hey stranger, you tried getting involved in the discussion by posting this, but it didn't live up to my standards, and therefore I never want to see anything you say ever again." While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy.
    - lfowles 11y ago
      > While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy. I've taken the same kind of attitude (towards vitriolic and stupid posts), because when I looked at my reactions to all sorts of those posts, it's inevitably not the way I want to be spending my time. I don't get on Facebook to fulfill my "balanced world view" quota ;) ! Realize that we now have more exposure to other people's opinions than we've really ever had before... IMO it's a healthy way to cope.
okasaki 11y ago
If the algorithms are accurate I don't see the problem. If a loan is denied because phone use analysis shows that the applicant most likely won't pay it back, then that's good isn't it?
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
I'm a rather unorthodox case in that I own several smartphones, but never use the telephony or even any social and entertainment applications. Instead, I treat them as testing grounds for various alternative platforms like KDE Plasma Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, Replicant, CyanogenMod and so forth. My actual phone is a prepaid flip phone. (At the risk of invoking "le wrong generation," I'm a Millennial. I find a certain humor in observing how older people are glued to their smartphones in spite of the frequent complaints that are implicitly assumed about me. I will grant that pathological smartphone obsession is a disgruntling phenomenon, but hardly contained to Millennials. I frequently find myself the odd one out not checking their smartphone in a waiting room.)
cubano 11y ago
It would be beyond great if someone would create an open source version of that graph so I can see just how much of my info is being captured and used for and/or against me on a daily basis. I specifically carry an unlocked android handset that is not connected to a carrier, and use a custom ROM that allows me to turn off my cell radio to prevent that sort of tracking. I use a throwaway google account but do sometimes check my real email thru the device (and so have the account on the device as a user), but sometimes turn on wifi location for various reasons, so I can't really tell how much "they" know. I just wonder...is anything I'm doing really helping things?
SandersAK 11y ago
If you think that what defines you is a series of recorded or remembered events, worrying about this makes a lot of sense. Loan providers using this instead of their predatory bullshit system now seems ok to me.
atirip 11y ago
Meh. Creditworthiness based on your online activities is solution looking for a problem. It hardly is issue for loaners today. The problem is how to lend more, not less. So no fear here, if you are good today, you are good tomorrow, no matter the online activity. Secondly if and when really some loaners voluntarily limit their market, there will always be who do not and whose position on the market will be total ignorance of online stuff.
n_time 11y ago
the cavalier attitude this article shows towards inferring character assessments based on metrics makes me feel uneasy. given the equally casual approach most technologists have towards embedding user behaviours into applications, the potential feedback loop of many companies deliberately creating habits in users, and then other firms judging those people based on their collected habits is distressing. instead of sneaking malware and pop ups on to your computer as you browse, the malware is installed inside of you, as habits. there's no glaring pop up telling me there's something wrong with my windows license. having uninstalled my social apps for several weeks now, i still find myself turning the phone on and staring at the homescreen for a few seconds. my eyes dully glazed over. it's more insidious than the popup, which i could close with a click. with this, i have to be mindful, and grab back the reins of my body. the process is internal. given the research on the involuntary nature of habits, i question the ethics of creating these behaviours at all. is it ethical to create involuntary behaviours in your users? is it ethical to judge users for behaviours deliberately created in them by applications? should the attention of users be better protected? can we start developing consumer applications that aren't deliberately designed to capitalise on the attention of their users? how can we educate people to navigate a world of applications designed to hold and capitalise on their attention? media awareness class in high school did not prepare me for this brave new world. :P
- karmacondon 11y ago
  is it ethical to create involuntary behaviours in your users? Yes. Coke, McDonalds, The Gap and every other consumer company try like hell to create involuntary behaviors in people all the time. is it ethical to judge users for behaviours deliberately created in them by applications? Yes. Other than the specificity of the words "by applications", this is what credit scores are designed to do. Madison Avenue in deliberately trying to create behaviors in all of us. A credit rating measures a person's ability to resist that when it isn't financially sound. should the attention of users be better protected? No, at least not for adults of sound mind. People are free to make their own decisions, whether that's doing a keg stand or spending 3 hours clicking a button on Farmville. People can be warned about potential dangers, but it probably won't have much of an effect. can we start developing consumer applications that aren't deliberately designed to capitalise on the attention of their users? Yes. Or at least, you and anyone else who wants to can. But making products that people use frequently is a common definition of success. Most comapnies aren't going to pass that up because some people have addictive personalities. how can we educate people to navigate a world of applications designed to hold and capitalise on their attention? Good luck with that. Education vs the Forces of Capitalism. Winner: Capitalism.
PuffinBlue 11y ago
Site seems to be under heavy load. Mirror (fullpage screenshot): http://i.imgur.com/4cX12xZ.png http://i.imgur.com/4cX12xZ.png
J_Darnley 11y ago
If I don't have one then does that mean I don't exist? Oh my god! I can feel myself fading!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- rawTruthHurts 11y ago
  I guess we are not the target. I don't know if that means we're safe.
dinkumthinkum 11y ago
It's really hard to take this seriously. First this "study" for the purpose of making generalizations or deciding credit worthiness is pretty silly. The sample is not representative of much. Whether people put last names in their phone? What is this, pseudo-sociological hokum? Why don't we just use phrenology and call it a day? Why don't we just ask people to move their mouse in a JavaScript app on the credit decision site and those that take "strong ardent movements" will be the most credit worthy. Now the credit counseling services will focus less on getting your finances in order but giving you "insider tips" like "enter last names in your phone" or "keep a second phone for games." This is just a crock of nonsense. It's like "data mining" is a hammer and everything is a nail or something.

68 points by tmbsundar 11y ago

Vraxx 11y ago

Honestly this is the type of thing that motivates me to care about privacy. Arguing against "Why should I care if I don't do anything wrong" never seems like it has an impact on either side of the argument, but this type of data analysis shows very vividly that you can be impacted by this data gathering in very meaningful ways even if you aren't doing anything traditionally thought of as wrong. The even scarier part of this is that these are patterns of borderline subconscious behavior that can "determine" certain traits about you. Before, worrying about posting uncouth content on social media is a very conscious worry/action that you take when representing yourself of the internet. Micromanaging my phone behaviors sounds much more tedious and burdensome.

scholia 11y ago
> Micromanaging my phone behaviors sounds much more tedious and burdensome. Sounds impossible ;-) I'm sure conclusions can equally be drawn from the way people try to micromanage their phone behaviors....
- Vraxx 11y ago
  Yeah, I guess "fruitless nightmare" more aptly describes my feelings for the idea of micromanaging my phone behaviors. Either way, I think this kind of data extrapolation is a lot more likely to get people who don't normally care about privacy violations to begin caring.

abruzzi 11y ago

While I think using this kind of data is a bad thing from a privacy perspective, the first thought I had reading this article was "what about minimal users?" Specifically people like me, I use my phone for phone and web. No social media, no texting. I probably use the phone 5-10 times a day, and mostly for very short time periods.* (Actually I also use it for a clock, but that doesn't take me past the lock screen, so I don't know if it counts.) So maybe there is a classification that you can determine for minimal users (and I doubt they all come from the same socio-economic group), but aside from GPS logging (which apple tells us the don't do) there are large gaps where they don't know if I'm filing bankruptcy or golfing at a $100k a year club. I know I'm in the quickly diminishing minority in the world, but if you build your business around using a trove of data that is not available for a subset of potential customers, do you bar them from becoming customers, or fall back to standard mechanisms? * The article mentions people under representing their usage, so I'll just add that my three year old iPhone 5S is usually at about 95% charge at the end of the day, and the only time I've seen it below 90% was during an extended trip outside, or at the border of reception areas.

soylentcola 11y ago
Isn't that how credit and lending work to some extent? My credit history is relatively sparse but it used to be nearly nonexistent. My main source of credit history comes from using my Visa for typical monthly purchasing while paying it off every month. I don't have a car loan. I had a motorcycle loan that I only took because I wanted to build credit and could've easily just paid cash. Even getting that was a bit of a hassle and they only gave me the small loan (around $5000) because my income and expenses clearly showed I shouldn't have any issues paying for it. Outside of some minor low-interest student loan debt in the $10k range, I just don't have much history. If I wanted to get a better credit card or some other loan/line of credit, I'd have a harder time getting approved for decent terms because I simply don't like to deal with debt. Like you, this makes me a minority (or at least a less desirable customer for lenders). I'd imagine it's a similar case. Some might decline to do business with me. Others might offer worse terms. It's kinda unfortunate because in order to prove my creditworthiness, it would seem I need to do things that I consider less financially wise (take out car loans or other lines of credit to establish a record of paying them off).
- cubano 11y ago
  I'm not an expert, but I do know paying off your total credit card debt every month does nothing to help your credit score and, in fact, may even kinda hurt it. You would be far better off to get 2-3 cards, ring up some debt on each of them, and then make the monthly minimum payment, on-time, for 6-12 months. For sure you would see a pretty big jump in your score doing that.
  - Vraxx 11y ago
    Source on that? I'd want to see some pretty convincing evidence before I'd even consider doing that. For starters you'll be paying interest by doing that, which I guess is a "good" quality from the lender's point of view, but I'm certainly not going to start forking over interest in hopes that it'll improve my credit score.
    - 11y ago

tantalor 11y ago

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sTegRqoQDfsJ:www.roughtype.com/%3Fp%3D6683+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sTegRqo...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ignaces 11y ago

it died

qntty 11y ago
You are your phone The fact can no longer be avoided: You are your phone. The pattern of smartphone use is the pattern of the self. This is who you are: Barcode of smartphone use over two weeks.Black areas indicate times where the phone was in use and Saturdays are indicated with a red dashed line. Weekday alarm clock times (and snoozing) are clearly evident. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Silicon Valley lending startups are looking to base personal loan decisions on analyses of data from individuals’ phones. The apps running on a person’s device, entrepreneurs have found, “generate huge amounts of data — texts, emails, GPS coordinates, social-media posts, retail receipts, and so on — indicating thousands of subtle patterns of behavior that correlate with repayment or default.” How you use your phone reveals more than you think: Even obscure variables such as how frequently a user recharges the phone’s battery, how many incoming text messages they receive, how many miles they travel in a given day or how they enter contacts into their phone — the decision to add last name correlates with creditworthiness — can bear on a decision to extend credit. Meanwhile, the New York Times today reports on a new study published in Science that reveals how a person’s economic status can be determined through a fairly simple analysis of phone use. The researchers, working in Africa, collected details “about when calls were made and received and the length of the calls” as well as “when text messages were sent, and which cellphone towers the texts and calls were routed through.” They analyzed this metadata to “build an algorithm that predicts how wealthy or impoverished a given cellphone user is. Using the same model, the researchers were able to answer even more specific questions, like whether a household had electricity.” I am not a number, you declare. I am more than a credit score. You may well be. But the tell-tale phone reveals more than one’s financial standing and trustworthiness. The tell-tale phone reveals all. Take a look at that chart again: Barcode of smartphone use over two weeks.Black areas indicate times where the phone was in use and Saturdays are indicated with a red dashed line. Weekday alarm clock times (and snoozing) are clearly evident. It shows the pattern of one person’s smartphone use over a two-week period, beginning late on a Friday afternoon. Each vertical line represents a single use of the phone, the width of the line showing how long the use extended. The chart comes from a new study on phone use, published in PLOS ONE. Four UK researchers installed a usage-tracking app on the smartphones of twenty-three students and staff members at the University of Lincoln, and then examined the data after two weeks. They discovered that “a simple measure — recording when the phone is in use — can provide a vast array of information about an individual’s daily routine.” Data on phone use, to take a simple example, provides “a non-invasive indication of sleep length.” All but one of the test subjects used their phones as an alarm clock on weekdays, and all of them without exception reported that the last thing they do before going to sleep is to check their phone. Gaps in use during the day are also good indicators of naps. The test subjects used their phones more than five hours a day, on average. Much of that usage went on unconsciously, the researchers found. When the subjects were asked to estimate how often they checked their phone during a day, the average answer was 37 times. The tracking data revealed, however, that the subjects actually used their phones 85 times a day on average, more than twice as often as they thought. “For exploring checking behaviours,” the researchers report, “estimated number of uses show little reliability for measuring actual uses.” We see here how deeply entwined the phone has become with the self — a seamless extension of body, mind, and personality. It is so much a part of us that we are no more conscious of the device moment-to-moment than we are of, say, our hands. If the mere tracking of phone use reveals how we spend our days, our diurnal routines, imagine what would be revealed by a deeper analysis, one that examined the apps we use, the people we connect with, the things we look at and listen to, what we say and what we write and what we like, where we go, what we search for, the photos we take. It’s all there, public self and private self. There’s no shame in admitting the fact: You are your phone.

bambax 11y ago

We like to think we can find "secrets" by eavesdropping on private data and determining the creditworthiness of someone according to how they enter their contacts onto their address book. But I'm pretty sure the correlation between loans repayment and very public and easily accessible socio-economic data is much stronger than with those quirky behavioral traits, such as: where you live, did you attend / finish college, how you spell, do you have a job, are you married, etc.

fluxquanta 11y ago

Articles like this, coupled with my increasing dissatisfaction with how social media makes me feel and how my thought process throughout the day feels fractured, really make me want to give up my smartphone entirely. However, I can't bring myself to get over the fear and dread of being "disconnected". Is there anyone here who has given up their smartphone and has any advice on how you did it, and how you are now? Is it even possible to do so working in a tech field?

lfowles 11y ago
A good way to let go of the feeling of "being disconnected" is to measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself. That's basically how I toned down my facebook use, I realized I was skimming and got a few internal chuckles, but I never took action on anything I saw on there, whether it was to write happy birthday, comment on a photo I liked, or try some crafty DIY thing.
- fluxquanta 11y ago
  > measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself I feel like, in general, something like facebook just makes my thoughts MORE negative in general. For instance, I'm a member of some groups for different hobbies, and I've adopted a "one strike and you're out" policy with regard to what people post to the group. If I find a post to be irrelevant to the topic at hand or in any way annoying -- boom, "Ignore all posts from [user]". I'm saying to myself, "Hey stranger, you tried getting involved in the discussion by posting this, but it didn't live up to my standards, and therefore I never want to see anything you say ever again." While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy.
  - lfowles 11y ago
    > While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy. I've taken the same kind of attitude (towards vitriolic and stupid posts), because when I looked at my reactions to all sorts of those posts, it's inevitably not the way I want to be spending my time. I don't get on Facebook to fulfill my "balanced world view" quota ;) ! Realize that we now have more exposure to other people's opinions than we've really ever had before... IMO it's a healthy way to cope.

okasaki 11y ago

If the algorithms are accurate I don't see the problem. If a loan is denied because phone use analysis shows that the applicant most likely won't pay it back, then that's good isn't it?

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

I'm a rather unorthodox case in that I own several smartphones, but never use the telephony or even any social and entertainment applications. Instead, I treat them as testing grounds for various alternative platforms like KDE Plasma Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, Replicant, CyanogenMod and so forth. My actual phone is a prepaid flip phone. (At the risk of invoking "le wrong generation," I'm a Millennial. I find a certain humor in observing how older people are glued to their smartphones in spite of the frequent complaints that are implicitly assumed about me. I will grant that pathological smartphone obsession is a disgruntling phenomenon, but hardly contained to Millennials. I frequently find myself the odd one out not checking their smartphone in a waiting room.)

cubano 11y ago

It would be beyond great if someone would create an open source version of that graph so I can see just how much of my info is being captured and used for and/or against me on a daily basis. I specifically carry an unlocked android handset that is not connected to a carrier, and use a custom ROM that allows me to turn off my cell radio to prevent that sort of tracking. I use a throwaway google account but do sometimes check my real email thru the device (and so have the account on the device as a user), but sometimes turn on wifi location for various reasons, so I can't really tell how much "they" know. I just wonder...is anything I'm doing really helping things?

SandersAK 11y ago

If you think that what defines you is a series of recorded or remembered events, worrying about this makes a lot of sense. Loan providers using this instead of their predatory bullshit system now seems ok to me.

atirip 11y ago

Meh. Creditworthiness based on your online activities is solution looking for a problem. It hardly is issue for loaners today. The problem is how to lend more, not less. So no fear here, if you are good today, you are good tomorrow, no matter the online activity. Secondly if and when really some loaners voluntarily limit their market, there will always be who do not and whose position on the market will be total ignorance of online stuff.

n_time 11y ago

the cavalier attitude this article shows towards inferring character assessments based on metrics makes me feel uneasy. given the equally casual approach most technologists have towards embedding user behaviours into applications, the potential feedback loop of many companies deliberately creating habits in users, and then other firms judging those people based on their collected habits is distressing. instead of sneaking malware and pop ups on to your computer as you browse, the malware is installed inside of you, as habits. there's no glaring pop up telling me there's something wrong with my windows license. having uninstalled my social apps for several weeks now, i still find myself turning the phone on and staring at the homescreen for a few seconds. my eyes dully glazed over. it's more insidious than the popup, which i could close with a click. with this, i have to be mindful, and grab back the reins of my body. the process is internal. given the research on the involuntary nature of habits, i question the ethics of creating these behaviours at all. is it ethical to create involuntary behaviours in your users? is it ethical to judge users for behaviours deliberately created in them by applications? should the attention of users be better protected? can we start developing consumer applications that aren't deliberately designed to capitalise on the attention of their users? how can we educate people to navigate a world of applications designed to hold and capitalise on their attention? media awareness class in high school did not prepare me for this brave new world. :P

karmacondon 11y ago
is it ethical to create involuntary behaviours in your users? Yes. Coke, McDonalds, The Gap and every other consumer company try like hell to create involuntary behaviors in people all the time. is it ethical to judge users for behaviours deliberately created in them by applications? Yes. Other than the specificity of the words "by applications", this is what credit scores are designed to do. Madison Avenue in deliberately trying to create behaviors in all of us. A credit rating measures a person's ability to resist that when it isn't financially sound. should the attention of users be better protected? No, at least not for adults of sound mind. People are free to make their own decisions, whether that's doing a keg stand or spending 3 hours clicking a button on Farmville. People can be warned about potential dangers, but it probably won't have much of an effect. can we start developing consumer applications that aren't deliberately designed to capitalise on the attention of their users? Yes. Or at least, you and anyone else who wants to can. But making products that people use frequently is a common definition of success. Most comapnies aren't going to pass that up because some people have addictive personalities. how can we educate people to navigate a world of applications designed to hold and capitalise on their attention? Good luck with that. Education vs the Forces of Capitalism. Winner: Capitalism.

PuffinBlue 11y ago

Site seems to be under heavy load. Mirror (fullpage screenshot): http://i.imgur.com/4cX12xZ.png http://i.imgur.com/4cX12xZ.png

J_Darnley 11y ago

If I don't have one then does that mean I don't exist? Oh my god! I can feel myself fading!

deleted 11y ago
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rawTruthHurts 11y ago
I guess we are not the target. I don't know if that means we're safe.

dinkumthinkum 11y ago

It's really hard to take this seriously. First this "study" for the purpose of making generalizations or deciding credit worthiness is pretty silly. The sample is not representative of much. Whether people put last names in their phone? What is this, pseudo-sociological hokum? Why don't we just use phrenology and call it a day? Why don't we just ask people to move their mouse in a JavaScript app on the credit decision site and those that take "strong ardent movements" will be the most credit worthy. Now the credit counseling services will focus less on getting your finances in order but giving you "insider tips" like "enter last names in your phone" or "keep a second phone for games." This is just a crock of nonsense. It's like "data mining" is a hammer and everything is a nail or something.