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I've both worked on systems like that professionally and built some myself just for fun to play with GPS/geospatial data/streaming etc (fun tech). I'd _never_ w
by otter-in-a-suit 3y ago
I've both worked on systems like that professionally and built some myself just for fun to play with GPS/geospatial data/streaming etc (fun tech). I'd _never_ want something like that installed in my vehicle.
First off, you're usually relying on ODB-2 + GPS + usually some type of streaming backend, which means you're looking at 2 unreliable (or, at least, hard to _interpret_) sources of data delivered and presumably analyzed by a notoriously tricky delivery mechanism (near-real time streaming), which has a tendency to be too much to handle for the notoriously non-"tech" insurance world. The chances that data is being interpreted quite differently to what's happening on the road, but yet is treated as a source of truth for your premium model!, is certainly not zero.
Even if you assume these companies handle all that properly (or outsource it), these data sets are some of the creepiest by their very nature - not only can you trivially determine somebody's home address by analyzing frequency of the reverse-geocoded data points (or any other geospatial features you derive), you can also determine any other patterns within a person's life - schedules, work location & employer, health habits (do they go to the gym or a bar? do they only ever leave to go to the grocery store?) etc., not to mention all the data ODB-2 gives you about actual driving behavior. And guess what, you can't use synthetic data for testing for much of this (I tried), so we would up testing these systems with real data, albeit with employees who volunteered.
A home address is arguably not that sensitive, given that that is public record if you own your home and your insurance company has that data anyways, but the patterns + all the other metadata + all the "public" data that is out there ready for purchase about the average American, now you have something close to a personality profile that would make your average marketing exec (or, potentially, bad government actor) squeal in delight.
- louwrentius 3y agoHow is this different from the phone in your pocket?
- otter-in-a-suit 3y agoThe biggest difference is that using something non-privacy-conscious (like Google Maps) doesn't have an immediate impact on my insurance bills. It also doesn't have access to my ODB-2 data and I can turn it off. iOS allows me to set relatively fine-grained permissions and privacy settings. Unless I actively use Google Maps (or any other GPS enabled app), it won't be able to report my location data.
- stravant 3y agoValue proposition. What are you going to do, _not_ walk around with a phone in your pocket?
- tcfhgj 3y agoWhy not?
- reaperducer 3y agoWhat are you going to do, _not_ walk around with a phone in your pocket? Sounds like me three days a week. I walk out of my home carrying nothing more than a $20 bill and a newspaper. I go to the French cafe a couple of blocks away and have a leisurely lunch while reading the news without any tech or financial company following me around tracing, tallying, tabulating, and selling my life. I call it "normal."
- sireat 3y agoThat was normal 25 years ago. These days that puts you in a "suspicious person without phone on them at all times" category.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hippari2 3y agoWell we can build a startup that offer cheaper health/life insurance based on phone data tracking and see how people would react.
- reaperducer 3y agoWell we can build a startup that offer cheaper health/life insurance based on phone data tracking and see how people would react. This exists. I saw a commercial for it on late-night TV. At the bottom it noted that it was not available in California or Massachusetts, which is what made me curious to look into it and see why it's so bad that it's been banned in certain states.
- johnnymorgan 3y agoI can, and do, leave it at home
- ClumsyPilot 3y agois it worse to be burgled 1-se or twice?
- fn-mote 3y agoThere is no reasonable scenario whereby your insurance company gets access to your geolocation trace information from your phone. It is possible that your phone provider does not have more than 24 hours of records of which phone towers you connected to. It is almost certain that the granularity of any information subpoenaed after the fact will not be sufficient to establish any specific behavior at the time of the accident. Your phone provider is probably not using some off-the-shelf ML modeling to slap together a risk profile that you will be unable to appeal and yet is years ahead of any government regulation. (E.g., in the US if your credit rating causes you to get a worse rate, you must be notified. I have not looked, but I'm very dubious that your "Driver Risk Profile (TM)" will have any such obligations - now or in the imaginable future. See below.) Biden's proposed AI Bill of Rights [1] is (surprisingly) a pretty interesting read: > You should know that an automated system is being used and understand how and why it contributes to outcomes that impact you. If this were a law, this part would be useful. > You and your communities should be free from unchecked surveillance I suppose watching your every move in the car isn't going to be considered "unchecked". Since people are all carrying cell phones, I'm not as hopeful this point goes anywhere useful. [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/#privacy https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/#privacy
- sumtechguy 3y ago> It is possible that your phone provider does not have more than 24 hours of records of which phone towers you connected to. It is much longer than that (they have exabytes of data and DO keep it). They have retention periods in years not days. They also bake stuff right into the OS. As they usually have final say on what can and can not be installed on your phone. Back when I worked this sort of thing they were looking into gathering that exact data and selling it. As being a cell phone is title II device they have a lot of wiggle room on doing exactly that as they are considered like an ISP. It is probably burred in that fine print you sign when you sign up.
- gambiting 3y agoMy sister had an insurance tracker fitted in her car, and it was awful - it kept sending her emails saying "we detected you going 70mph on a 20mph road, if this keeps happening we'll cancel your insurance altogether" - we'd contact them asking for proof, they would send us a GPS trace and of course she was driving on the motorway going legal 70mph going ABOVE a 20mph street but the system was dumb enough to just check "what's the speed limit at those exact coordinates" and issued automatic warning letter. It would also frequently show her negative driver scores for "smoothness" of driving every time she would go over a speedbump. Absolute travesty of a system.
- seper8 3y agoWhat in the actual FUCK am I reading 1984 aint got nothing on that insurance company. Do you remember the name so we can all collectively try to avoid it?
- gambiting 3y agoIt was just Volkswagen insurance(I think it was really underwritten by AXA?). She got a deal where any new VW got a year of free insurance, but because she was under 25 the tracker was mandatory, and getting insurance elsewhere would have been super expensive at her age, so financially it made a lot of sense, but after the first year we paid extra specifically so she could have insurance without the tracker.
- johnnymorgan 3y agoThat's called extortion....
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y agoWelcome to driving in 2023.
- simondotau 3y agoNo it isn't. They were not forced to buy that car or avail themselves of that insurance offer.
- delusional 3y agoOften "legacy" institutions appeal to their age to tell us how they should be trusted with data. Ironically, they are the people I least want to have my data, since they seem completely incompetent in using it for anything valuable and instead just try to use it to grasp more power. I'd rather some scrappy startup have all my data than my bank or my insurance provider. At least the startup has limited power. My bank can ruin my life by giving my a shit credit score because their model told them to, and by appealing to their trusted societal position, they'll convince themselves that it was the right thing to do.
- joncrane 3y ago>I'd rather some scrappy startup have all my data than my bank or my insurance provider Facebook was once a scrappy startup. As was Google.
- delusional 3y agoI'll extend that then. I'd rather Google and Facebook have my information than my bank or insurance provider.
- mavhc 3y agoDo you not have an privacy laws to prevent the selling your data? should get some of those. I'm pretty sure your insurance company knows where you live.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoWhy'd you build it then?
- ThrowAway1922A 3y agoWhy not? I've worked on systems like this as there is a demand. We offer it on personal lines and people like the discount, but business lines? They actually want these devices on their vehicles.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoSo they can weasel out of worker's comp payments, of course they want them. OP was describing a thing they obviously dislike, don't want in their life, don't seem to want to exist anywhere. "Because someone paid me to" is such weak justification for it. The idea that remunerative & interesting work is at worst morally neutral is one of the foulest norms of this site.
- commandlinefan 3y ago> can you trivially determine somebody's home address Well, your phone has already done that - Waze "helpfully" auto-populated my home and work address for me.
- xethos 3y agoBut people think it's creepy when they realize how much metadata they're feeding to the multinational conglomorates (to then be bought or commandeered by their government agencies).
- pookha 3y agoI suspect that you're probably not going to have a choice. At some point these things are getting installed into your car...Reminds me of AIS transponders on boats.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]