Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!isi.edu!woolf From: woolf@isi.edu (Suzanne Woolf) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Lifestyle Information ( was Re: Safeway Stores to Accept Charge Cards) Message-ID: <17536@venera.isi.edu> Date: 11 Apr 91 17:24:27 GMT References: <9418@rsiatl.Dixie.Com> <6750019@hp-vcd.HP.COM> Sender: news@isi.edu Reply-To: woolf@dca.isi.edu (Suzanne Woolf) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 80 In article seurer+@rchland.ibm.com (Bill Seurer) writes: >Excerpts from netnews.comp.org.eff.talk: 10-Apr-91 Re: Lifestyle >Information (.. John Eaton@hp-vcd.HP.COM (386) >> An ice cream store sold the list of kids that signed up for its birthday >> club to the Selective Service. If you were listed as 18 years old and had >> not registered then they sent you a reminder. > >There are lots of good reasons to oppose the collection of lifestyle >data, but PLEASE don't use examples of people getting caught breaking >the law (even if you COMPLETELY oppose the law they break) as an example >of why something shouldn't be done. Good point. Try this: The medical evidence as to the relationship between serum cholesterol, dietary intake of cholesterol, stress, and heart disease is ambiguous, and the conclusions researchers draw are still being revised. One thing that "everybody knows" that probably isn't true is that the relationship between dietary cholesterol and heart disease is linear: "too much" dietary cholesterol -> heart disease. The medical researchers say there's a relationship, and it's mixed up with heredity, but there's no hard and fast rule. Individuals vary. Your insurance company, however, would be more than happy to treat your dietary cholesterol intake, as determined by buying your grocery-shopping history, as a risk factor-- whether your personal heredity and lifestyle means those dozen eggs are really changing your heart disease risk or not. You can't prove they're wrong, exactly, and all they need is a plausible excuse to raise your rates or deny you a payout. This is a perfectly reasonable extension of what insurance companies already do, all the time. My husband is 24 years old. He, personally, has a perfectly fine driving record (one speeding ticket 4 years ago, no violations since, no claims). When we were considering changing auto insurers last week, we discovered that the agent wanted us to wait until after his birthday in June because the rate he could quote us would go down by $400 (about 45%) after my husband is 25. The truth is we could argue all we wanted, but the company doesn't care about his individual driving record; they have a rule (under 25 males are high risks) and don't care whether it applies to this particular person or not. Proving he's more dangerous than someone else doesn't enter into it, just as proving that those eggs will kill you won't enter into it when your health insurer can buy your grocery-shopping history. Another example: It already happens that if you live a lifestyle inconsistent with your reported income on your federal taxes, you are far more likely to get audited by the IRS. This will cost you time and money to deal with even if you are not, in fact, a lawbreaker: all you have to do is be different enough from "average" in how you earn your living and/or what you do with your money. >How are we EVER going to convince society that such collections are >wrong if the only examples we can point out are where lawbreakers were >caught?! Everybody has plenty of things they do, buy, and think that they wouldn't necessarily want known to anyone who asks. It's perfectly legal for me to get catalogs from Frederick's of Hollywood, but I'd just as soon the Moral Majority couldn't buy their mailing list and start sending me "Repent and be saved!" literature. If my employer were of a religious persuasion that frowns on alcohol, I'd just as soon he didn't know if I buy a case of beer a week. There are people I deal with daily with whom I don't care to share some of my political beliefs, which could easily be determined from a list of charities I contribute to. There are plenty of things that are neither illegal nor unethical, but are personal and not necessarily appropriate to treat as public information; and some of them can, and will, be used to hurt you. Even if you are completely innocent of any wrongdoing in your own eyes, you aren't necessarily innocent in someone else's: the government, your insurance company, your employer, your neighbor. Do you want to trust them all not to use "public" personal information against you, or do you want to keep it "private"? --Suzanne woolf@isi.edu