14 ms·
Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you
- dijksterhuis 6y agoI remember once being in a branch of HSBC trying to sort out a loan. I saw on the screen for my account they had a score of something like "customer behaviour", which was like 54 something. I had drunkenly called HSBC and ended up ranting at the person on the phone a few times (lost cards etc) so I think this was a rating of how well behaved I was towards their staff. The manager I was speaking to changed his tone fairly quickly after that screen came up! So this is nothing new, but I guess the scale and opportunities for data points are new. Although, having said that, a lot of marketing based scoring data is woefully inaccurate. I was once responsible for distributing a data set to company clients which covered interests and personal info for all UK population. Not only was most of the data about my dad wrong, the things that were accurate were years out of date. My information didn't exist. A colleague's email was completely wrong. Indicated he liked going on holiday but had never been outside of the UK. So these scores might be useless anyway. edit: got rid of "even if they exist".
- elliekelly 6y agoIt very well might be garbage data but if companies are acting on that data it’s still highly problematic. Maybe even worse than if the data were accurate.
- dijksterhuis 6y agoYeah that's probably the bigger problem!
- air7 6y agoThe possible silver lining is that companies will quickly realize the data is garbage (which is causing then losses) and stop using it.
- vladvasiliu 6y agoDepends on how quick is "quickly". If anything, they seem to be doubling down on this. From my discussions on the subject with people "in marketing", they are really convinced that not only is the data "accurate enough", but that collecting and exploiting it is actually for the client's benefit. I wonder how one would go about quantifying the usefulness of all this tracking, because I doubt it's cheap. The best I could get was "we're able to see changes in sales which correlate to marketing campaigns". I can totally buy that and it seems somewhat more advanced of an answer than the more common one of "If didn't work they wouldn't be doing it". What I wonder though is how they would go about quantifying how much better a tracking-based campaign worked than a "traditional" one would have.
- kiba 6y agoWhat if most of the marketing is useless in the first place? And most of the data are useless too. How would they know?
- usrusr 6y agoData that appears "good enough" under the purely economic lens can leave an awful lot of people unfairly out of service. In a low margin business a single bad customer can easily cost more than what is earned from ten good customers. In that situation, an oracle that rejects eight good customers per rejected bad customer would already be good enough.
- mindslight 6y agoThat's a pretty strong assumption. Data that is garbage isn't necessarily going to cause losses. In fact, making the market more opaque (less efficient) will add to profit margins. If all companies are using the same data/algorithm, then even incorrect decisions form a focal point. If all the companies think someone is a bad risk, then that person will end up paying more regardless. Even if one company defects and accurately prices their risk, that company will just lower their rate a little and that customer still won't be getting the rate they would have if full market competition were taking place.
- m463 6y agoDoes "risk avoidance" mean they have to act on the data?
- kgwxd 6y agoUseless, but being used. A divining rod in the hands of people deciding the big steps in your life.
- hrwl 6y agoI've had a similar experience. Had access to a dataset about which many breathless articles were written when it was leaked/breached a couple years later. Was able to find very little data on family members in the set and what was there was quite stale.
- beervirus 6y agoThe fact that it’s inaccurate doesn’t make it more acceptable.
- hnhg 6y agoShouldn't you be able to demand an explanation of how that score was calculated under GDPR? I'm really curious as to what it means now!
- dijksterhuis 6y agoI'm betting it was just a rating out of 10 the person answering the phone did after each call.
- dane-pgp 6y agohttps://gdpr-info.eu/art-14-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-14-gdpr/ "2. In addition to the information referred to in paragraph 1, the controller shall provide the data subject with the following information necessary to ensure fair and transparent processing in respect of the data subject: ... (g) the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject."
- indziektor 6y agoCase in point, I was just recently getting nowhere on an obviously automated decision, so I sent an email quoting GDPR Article 15(1)(h) (instead of Article 14) and got it resolved amicably within an hour. Maybe just coincidence, but their follow-up was a complete 180. I suppose it could be abused to get around certain automatic safeguards, but I made it clear that my intentions where just to ensure that my data is correct and being processed fairly, as I was sure it wasn't the case. But that requires that the company even cares about following the GDPR correctly, or perhaps even the Data Protection Authority of a given EU country. I know of one small but popular enough data broker that's been operating for years in the EU and flaunting the GDPR without any punishment so far. Not sure if this is the place to advertise it. But I suppose somebody whose GDPR rights were violated has to lodge a complaint first.
- klyrs 6y agoIn Europe, sure. But imho if a customer verbally abuses employees, it's perfectly fair to cease doing business with them.
- Karunamon 6y agoI think that people wind up worried about the wrong thing on these systems. The worst case scenario, where some all-knowing system negatively impacts you because it's rating your behavior on some opaque scale, isn't the one we should be worried about. That by itself is scary enough, but the much more likely case is the one where this system is rating you based on wrong information, and given Finagle's law.. Especially concerning when the justice system starts using this info; you really, really don't want to be the false positive.
- justanotherc 6y agoThe justice system has built into it the requirement to justify allegations against you though. By design everything in the justice system is transparent or its not admissible. So an opaque "score" of any sort wouldn't ever be acceptable evidence.
- sroussey 6y agoYou are thinking in about evidence in court. Police have other data that can flag you for greater scrutiny. Then your chances of even being in court go up.
- justanotherc 6y agoBut they have to establish reasonable suspicion, wuch they also have to justify in court in order to investigate you further. They can't just say "he had a bad score, so I pulled him over and found weed". If they did that, the stop would be unjustified and the whole case would be thrown out.
- patmorgan23 6y agoPredictive policing
- inetknght 6y ago> By design everything in the justice system is transparent or its not admissible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- usrusr 6y agoThere's a very good reason why organizations should be allowed to keep "fool me once/twice/thrice" records: it's what enables them to be nice to customers who don't abuse that niceness. But there's no process to appeal and the data might be laughably wrong. Outlawing cross-organizational aggregation might be a reasonable middle ground. It gives a further advantage to giants like Amazon, but all the problems compound at interorganizational integration.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoIn 2006, I spent some time in the hospital after a bike accident. Someone who shared my recovery room was an guy with kidney failure & an extremely poor attitude. I learned he was running out of places to get dialysis because he kept treating the staff poorly & getting kicked out of the dialysis centers. Imagine having some poor newly hired receptionist trying to help this near death, abusive asshole & reading a note in the computer screen that said “do not treat this person under any circumstances”.
- tomcooks 6y agoPrecisely what the Hippocratic Oath states, take care of all who have the green smiley icon and 70 or more happy points
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cosmodisk 6y agoPeople are complex. If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions, there's not much to add. It's already as bad as it gets: you can't say/write anything non vanilla in public because 10 years later some HR snooping app will analyze the sentiment on the post and outright reject you. And we all kind of blindly walking into this no questions asked.
- Solstinox 6y agoThe kind of people who make and buy these technologies say, “you just need more data/a better algorithm.” They don’t get that you could have 99.99999% of all possible information on a person AND that the missing 0.00001% could change everything you know about them.
- Swizec 6y ago> If some piece of code is used to predict my employability based on my facial expressions Funfact: when I first moved to USA I would practice emoting in the mirror so Americans could read my face and wouldn’t penalize me during interactions. Now people back home say I “grin like an american” > can’t say anything in public Ever noticed how Gen Z is switching back to private chatrooms and message groups? Public stuff is all polished and curated.
- joejerryronnie 6y agoMillennials just keep getting screwed - the generation that was born just in time to post every thought and action to the online public but also born to early to realize what a bad idea that was.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoAt least the Chinese system is out in the open. Many private companies surveilling everyone without anyone's knowledge is terrible. Companies using these scores are really only targeting a group of people that allow the collection to happen. My car insurance company would sure love to put a tracker in my car but there is no way in hell that is going to happen. I'm sure my driving style would qualify me for higher rates, yet I've never caused an accident or made a claim where I was at fault.
- gruez 6y agoArticle title: Data isn't just being collected from your phone [...] I skimmed the article and there's little mention of phone data collection. There's one mention of insurers using phones to collect driving data, but that's it. I was expecting some vast surveillance network using your phone to score you.
- Eyght 6y agoI feel like the Chinese style social score system won't have enough support in government for most countries, but we'll receive a decentralized version anyway through corporate overreach. Also, it's always amusing to arrive at an article about data collection and be greeted by this: https://i.imgur.com/d4Z4sdd.png https://i.imgur.com/d4Z4sdd.png
- RealStickman_ 6y agoThat's actually one of the best cookie banners I have seen. You don't even have to deselect everything, just 3 boxes.
- icedistilled 6y agoI mean, it's already standard practice (All states except CA) to use credit score in things like pricing your auto insurance. It's only a tiny leap to incorporate a similar magic number some company comes up with. Actually due to competition, if it correlates to risk, all companies will literally be forced to use the magic numbers or go into an adverse selection death spiral. Unless there is regulation against it, like in CA. Not all regulation is bad.
- white-flame 6y agoOne difference there is that people do have the right to view and challenge credit reports, while all this other social scoring is hidden from the targeted people.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI wonder at which point it becomes a self-fulfilling property - at which point decisions based on data-driven pigeonholing actually lock people on the paths "discovered" in the numbers? E.g. if a young adult gets classified as "disorderly, drunk, unsuitable for reproduction, suitable only for low-skill work" based on their history of college partying, and then consequently denied work and social opportunities (as everyone doing background checks sees that summary), the prediction essentially becomes a sentence. (The third season of Westworld, despite bad writing and even worse gunfights, was very good at bringing this point up.)
- drtillberg 6y agoA central premise of this article is not correct. If an employer, for example, is using tens of thousands of background data points to deny employment to a person, the employer would need to disclose that to the applicant.[1]. If the things in this article are secret then the law may well be violated. Also, not really the best idea to apply secret proprietary algorithms to these kinds of decisions because you're eventually going to have to disprove improper bias, which can easily and "systemically" be baked into a background screening tool. [1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/background-checks-what-employers-need-know https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/background-checks-what-em...
- gmantg 6y agoNo need to disclose anything: plausible deniability is enough. And "bias" can be fixed by ad-hoc quotas.
- vorpalhex 6y agoWhy wouldn't an HR person or hiring staffer immediately out the company or even sue them?
- gmantg 6y agoWhat do you mean? Why wouldn't an HR sue his own employer? Because binding arbitration and the employer will make sure to destroy the reputation of that HR.
- trustmeimdrunk 6y agoWe can answer that question by rephrasing, "why haven't HR employees sued their employers, time and time again?" then if it interests you personally pursue precedents. Or better yet "Why dont employees commit career suicide for relatively minor offences that dont affect them personally and inflict no direct harm?"
- FalconSensei 6y ago
- surajs 6y agoI'd give the author of this clickbait of a link about a 0
- vorpalhex 6y agoNot a single source or citation for some extremely broad claims.
- gmantg 6y agoSurveillance capitalism to the USA is like heroin to an addict: he thinks he can give up at any time, that he can manage the addiction and find the balance, until he realises that he is a slave to that addiction and can't change anything. The Congress could destroy this "big data is the new oil" business model, but they don't want to give up the money from big tech, they think they can manage this addiction and find a balance between greed and freedom, they find excuses that surveillance is a matter of national security today, but at the end USA will repeat the fate of that addict.
- scarface74 6y agoThis entire article was a puff piece with no details and definitely didn’t say anything about phones.
- PeterStuer 6y agoBoth China and the US are oligarchies. You can argue that in China is is the government that owns the enterprises, and in the US it is the enterprises that own the government, but that does not change much.
- jermier 6y agoThere are people out there resisting these efforts. For example, I know people who are against smartphones and use a so called 'dumbphone' or feature phone for their main number. If they need to buy groceries, they refuse to use a loyalty card, and always pay in cash. They typically have a secure and private laptop with something like Ubuntu on it, and use Firefox with all the anti-tracking features enabled, and uBlock Origin installed, JS turned off by default etc. The typical steps people take to minimize their footprint against these predictive algos
- xwdv 6y agoWell then these people are fucked. Much like how using no credit means you have no credit history and a low credit score, you will have a very hard time trying to buy a house. If you spend your whole life being anonymous, be prepared to be treated as a high risk consumer who cannot participate in certain things, because of a low social score.
- partyboat1586 6y agoWhen I graduated high school ~10 years ago I remember one of our schools leadership gave a speech on making a good record of yourself on social media rather than avoiding it. This was when companies first started looking up people's Facebook. He was way ahead of his time but he was missing a key part which is the expansion of data collection into every aspect of our lives. It's not just social media you need to worry about.
- rhn_mk1 6y agoThat may well be, but that's not the spirit. Instead, "if we all resisted more, we'd be free of that crap". Granted, this is the tragedy of the commons. By acting in one's own interest: get a good score, people poison the well for everone: everyone must work and self-censor to keep a good score.
- srveale 6y agoWhat percentage of people do you think are willing to take even one of the steps mentioned in OP's comment? I'm pessimistic.
- tobyhinloopen 6y agoFunny how the cookie wall is the first thing that pops up. It’s not a bad one though, to be fair
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoThe article is about smartphones, not dumbphones. This matters as some people won't own smartphones for this reason. Not many though, I suppose.
- grazhero99 6y agoDo you guys think there's any realistic hope today (not accounting for what kind of horrible stuff might be possible in the future) of being able to keep your 'genuine' online activities separated from your public facing, sanitized ones? Such that no company's HR department would be able to tie your real life identity to your real online activities? I imagine it could be possible if you're serious and rigorous about it. Or am I being naïve for even entertaining such a thought?
- t0mmyb0y 6y agoYes. Ditch being connected when you don't need to be and think several times before you connect...is it worth it. That's what I have done for a very long time. Almost no data about me exists. I am also very heavy handed with permissions and apps on device. I don't even allow google to install the google app on my device.
- orangecat 6y agoDepends on your threat model. I expect the NSA can easily associate my real identity with my HN account. I don't expect most HR departments to have the ability or inclination.
- unnouinceput 6y agoYes, it's possible. Keep your normal public activities boring and straight. For everything else use TOR/VPN/Proxies/etc.
- joejerryronnie 6y agoThis exact scenario is what makes Tokyo so exciting.
- dcewcrrec 6y agoThe more energy you put into being anonymous, the more anonymous you are, but it's not an on or off switch. It's like something that can constantly be improved. You can even go as far as changing the way you speak to avoid stylometrics. The question to ask yourself is 'what can reasonably be found out about me?' You can be found on the smallest trace of evidence, but is it reasonable to expect someone to do that? You're not exactly a government spy. Just take obvious steps like not using your real name and you should be fine.
- rootusrootus 6y agoAside from being a mostly clickbait puff piece, the solution to this is regulation. All companies collecting data this way need to be subject to exactly the same requirements as the credit bureaus. Citizens need to be told what data is collected, why, when it gets used, and they need easy access to seeing their own data, as well as a well-regulated method for correcting it. And we could just dramatically limit how much of this can even be used for housing and employment decisions, and crank up the penalties for misuse.
- perl4ever 6y agoWhile we're at it, maybe we could enforce easier access to credit information. One report per year with no credit score is absurdly restrictive.
- LorenPechtel 6y agoIt was reasonable at the time it was put into place. It's now so much easier to deal with information, reform is needed but it's not going to happen unless the Democrats are in control. What I would like to see is a rule that if a company collects data for more than in-house use (so it doesn't apply to a company who simply has records of it's customers) they must make a reasonable effort to notify you and allow you to examine the data and challenge anything you believe to be incorrect.
- perl4ever 6y ago>It was reasonable at the time it was put into place I don't think so. It's only been around for about 15 years or so. Internet infrastructure wasn't as advanced then, but neither were there as many people who would've used it. The only reason I can see for the state of things is that the credit bureaus wanted to nickel-and-dime people for credit monitoring, and because they could water down the regulations, they did. Another thing that was sorely needed was to make the domain a .gov or something other than a .com to prevent so many imposters. And I just now read on Wikipedia a list of companies excluded from the requirements, like ChexSystems.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- techlaw 6y agoThere are several comments here about the lack of background info or citations. The authors have a site which includes their letters to the FTC, etc which provide greater detail and references: https://www.representconsumers.org/surveillance-scoring/ https://www.representconsumers.org/surveillance-scoring/
- aww_dang 6y agoIf this is true, it could be reverse engineered to increase credit worthiness.
- mnm1 6y agoThis should be illegal. The credit unions are bad enough but this is egregious. Software should not be allowed to affect humans without a complete explanation of how it works, how it reached its decision, and a human with authority to appeal to. Frankly, a bunch of the uses here already seem illegal like denying people the ability to rent or to get a job based on some black box software that provides hidden information on people. How can we even know the software isn't something like: if (race === black) deny Application(); Artificial intelligence indeed. From 1820.
- d23 6y agoPerhaps we can find out what our personal scores are. That would help us figure out whether we support this or not.
- hedora 6y agoHuh. I bought a few nice bottles of whiskey and gin at BevMo recently, and they swiped my drivers license. Now I get ads for whiskey in the mail. I wonder how much that reduced my future employment prospects.
- t0mmyb0y 6y agoWhy in the world would you allow them to swipe your id? Craziness.
- DavidPeiffer 6y agoWhen getting insurance quotes, there was a disclosure that a credit check had been conducted, listed the top 4 items affecting my Risk Score, and gave a link for questions. I found the guide to all the possible reasons and was amazed at some of the elements. [1] * They prefer 84 years of credit history to put you in a lower risk category. Having 2 lines of credit paid every month versus 1 would make a huge difference in this regard. * Oil company credit cards are seen as very high risk, and even having 1 is seen as a negative. * Department store credit cards are also viewed negatively. The weightings and mixing of variables is the secret sauce...but reading through it all made me very happy with my decision to turn down an offer from one of the major reporting agencies. [1] PDF Warning https://consumer-solutions.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/2903863/0/filename/Attract+Reason+Codes+v+08.15.pdf https://consumer-solutions.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/29038...
- trustmeimdrunk 6y agoHR arguably has the most immediate potential gain, and from its new policies those in the employee pool have the most to lose. There's a lot of use in applying insurance analysis techniques to filter out bad hires much better than conventional practices. Instead of interviews, vetting, tests, headhunters, you can adopt the latest in data analysis to cut costs and improve your KPIs across the board. Predict an employee's productivity by analyzing online browsing behavior. Fixed qualities like attention span and drift; escapism and procrastination; pleasure-seeking vs productive, curious, prosocial browsing habits. How do these overlap in a typical workday? Are you focused or dispersed? Does your attention cycle? Do you complete tasks to the end, what happens when you get stuck on a problem? This doesnt even get into friendship networks, purchasing behavior, public displays of attitudes. Can you game the system? Probably not. These days that requires you to play a losing game of tweaking your personality down to the smallest meticulous detail. Essentially going against the grain of your natural flow ordering all aspects of your identity to suit an opaque and almost certainly fault-laden. People flip out about the Chinese social score, without realizing that it was pioneered in the US private-sector. Say no to mandatory medical intervention. Written from my Android 2.2
- vasili111 6y agoOK. Now lets look from another perspective. Now when we know that, how to make system score us high? How to show system what it scores as high and hide what it scores as low? How to benefit from that system?
- rapjr9 6y agoOne thing that could end this is someone hacking into the databases and changing scores. Say for all the US senators and a few CEO's and celebrities. It would basically prove that the scores are no longer trustworthy. Not that they are anyway, but if they start affecting "important" lives things might change. I've been wondering if all this data is being used for stock market manipulation or timing the market. What exactly are those quant's using for inputs?
- amelius 6y ago> One thing that could end this is someone hacking into the databases and changing scores. While they're at it, perhaps they can change some US senators' bank balances just for fun.
- speby 6y agoWe're already "scored" all the time ... all types of insurance, mortgages, credit ratings, past criminal record, and so on. Now, we may wish to control the use of data being used on us or against us, and I support that, but to the degree with which we are being "scored" generally, we are already being scored all the time across tons of other dimensions and commercial and even governmental applications.