Looking to insure your first car? Unfortunately, this is going to cost you an awful lot of money. But what would you do to bring the cost down? What about giving your insurer access to your Facebook?
This was a genuine proposal from Admiral, but Facebook has denied Admiral’s attempts to spy on young drivers’ social posts in order to set car insurance premiums. It is the first time in the UK an insurance company has openly wanted to use Facebook ‘stalking’ as a strategy for reducing premium charges. But how would it even work?
Admiral’s firstcarquote is a new service designed to appeal to the new ‘digital generation’ and requires a Facebook connection to use the app. This connection was going to include Admiral’s permission to read posts made by the new driver.
Using an algorithm, Admiral hoped to find out if the young person will be a safe driver by analysing their entries on Facebook. The algorithm would build up a personality profile for the user such as:
- Are they organised?
- Do they take risks?
- Are they a sensation-seeker?
Once the data was gathered, Admiral could reduce the insurance premiums depending on the results. For example, if the user portrayed personal traits of a safe driver their premium could be reduced, such as writing in concise sentences, using lists and setting up to meet people at a set time and place. In contrast if they use too many exclamation marks, write words like “always” and “never” instead of “maybe” it could make the user seem overconfident, which may result in no premium discount.
However, strict guidelines are in place for how businesses use personal information on the network. Admiral obviously forgot to check Clause 3.15 of Facebook’s policy which specifically prohibits use of data obtained from Facebook to “…make decisions about eligibility, including whether to approve or reject an application or how much interest to charge on a loan.” Therefore it will not allow the insurer to view users’ posts.
In a blog post by Open Rights Group, Jim Killock states “Facebook’s data is rich, but often ambiguous, may lack context and presents many risks. It is not clear to us that social media information is an appropriate tool for financial decision making.”
The app was planned to launch on Tuesday however, Admiral did not receive the agreement from Facebook in time, that resulted in a delay and it was ultimately pulled on Wednesday. The app will still launch but without the proposed algorithm functionality, and will act just like many other apps as users will be able to login via Facebook. They will then be asked a series of questions on the app which will not take into account their Facebook profile and may lead to a discount.
If there is anything to learn from this, it is that reading the small print is not only important for you as customers but its just as necessary for businesses.
