Recently, ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik appeared as a guest on FOX & Friends Weekend. On the program, Michael spoke with anchors Clayton Morris and Alisyn Camerota about Google’s recently announced plans to compete with Microsoft through their own operating system, Google Chrome OS. Specifically, Michael describes the privacy concerns associated with allowing Google complete access to a user’s computer. Check out the clip below.
Obviously, the notion that your private search habits can be used to deny you medical coverage is unnerving. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s beyond the realm of possibility. While there are those who might agree with Clayton that Michael’s prediction is “a big leap,” certain recent events at Google have given the idea more credence.
About a month ago, Mashable reported that Google and Compete.com were experimenting on delivering personalized ads based on a user’s credit score. While Google was quick to clarify that they “don’t collect or serve ads based on personal information without user permission,” it demonstrated a willingness on the company’s part to explore what would commonly be considered private information.
With the law only now beginning to catch up with technology, is it really that great of a leap to believe your “private” data could someday be used against you?
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[...] ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik said on Fox & Friends back in August, the notion that insurance companies could use information found online to deny or [...]
[...] ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik said on Fox & Friends back in August, the notion that insurance companies could use information found online to deny or [...]
[...] I’ve predicted publicly that medical insurance companies will try as hard as they can to aggregate data points from social media to set premiums for your coverage; we can imagine that insurance company executives would be willing to pay top dollar to know that a 35 year old healthy woman shares a last name with a 65 year-old woman in her social network who is a member of a breast cancer survivors group on that social network, that the 35 year-old healthy woman has pointed her browser a few times over the past year to a cancer treatment website, and that she emails with someone else about the topic of breast cancer. For better or worse, the future is going to see huge incentives to aggregate and correlate increasingly intimate details of a person’s past and current lives, whether they are “reputation” oriented, “privacy” oriented, or both. [...]
[...] I’ve predicted publicly that medical insurance companies will try as hard as they can to aggregate data points from social media to set premiums for your coverage; we can imagine that insurance company executives would be willing to pay top dollar to know that a 35 year old healthy woman shares a last name with a 65 year-old woman in her social network who is a member of a breast cancer survivors group on that social network, that the 35 year-old healthy woman has pointed her browser a few times over the past year to a cancer treatment website, and that she emails with someone else about the topic of breast cancer. For better or worse, the future is going to see huge incentives to aggregate and correlate increasingly intimate details of a person’s past and current lives, whether they are “reputation” oriented, “privacy” oriented, or both. [...]
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