Car insurer's dodgy data dealings exposed

A British underwriter specialising in car insurance has been caught out using data from social media platform Facebook.com to evaluate the psychological profile of prospective customers.

According to media outlet, theguardian.com, Facebook has insisted Admiral Insurance cancel the launch of its Firstcarquote service – just two hours before the scheduled launch. The problem arose out of Admiral's abuse of Facebook's privacy provisions under "Section 3.15 of Facebook's platform policy," the report revealed.

Admiral has since launched Firstcarquote, but with "reduced functionality" that doesn't build up a personality profile based on language used by the prospective customers. In essence, the original conception of Firstcarquote would look at words used by drivers such as "always" and "never" to determine whether the driver in question was "overconfident". Another sign of overconfidence is excessive use of multiple exclamation marks in posts, apparently.

In contrast, a word like "maybe" would be considered evidence of a careful driver. Admiral's system also would have awarded drivers with a discounted premium if they proved to be conscientious by virtue of writing succinctly and posting lists.

The report revealed that Facebook gets final approval of any app running through its platform, and the Admiral app didn't meet the necessary standard.

"Following discussions with Facebook the product is launching with reduced functionality, allowing first-time drivers to log in using Facebook and share some information to secure a faster, simpler and discounted quote," an Admiral spokesperson was quoted saying in the article.

If Firstcarquote in its original conception had been rolled out – and pioneered a trend for other insurance companies to follow – it would have forced many prospective buyers to make a difficult choice... paying more for car insurance premiums, or buckle under to the insurer's intrusive and unethical insistence on access to private information to secure a discount.

That's the view of Jim Killock, a digital rights campaigner and executive director of Open Rights.

"We need to think about the wider consequences of allowing companies to make decisions that affect us financially or otherwise, based on what we have said on social media," Killock was quoted saying in the article.

"Such intrusive practices could see decisions being made against certain groups based on biases about race, gender, religion or sexuality – or because their posts in some way mark them as unconventional. Ultimately, this could change how people use social media, encouraging self-censorship in anticipation of future decisions.

"Young people may feel pushed into such schemes because of financial constraints. The right to keep things private shouldn’t be the preserve of those who can afford it."