Techdirt Podcast Episode 184: Life Insurance, Life Surveillance

from the living-well dept

A major insurance company recently announced that it would offer discounts on life insurance to customers who wear activity trackers and log data showing they live a healthy lifestyle. This understandably freaked out some people, but there are interesting aspects to the idea as well. There's plenty to consider, so this week regular hosts Mike, Hersh and Dennis discuss whether this is an exciting innovation, a worrying expansion of surveillance culture, or both.

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Filed Under: insurance, podcast, privacy, surveillance


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Sep 2018 @ 10:36am

    I’m visually impaired and use a cane. Am I going to get higher rates because I can’t walk enough steps in a day? That seems like a violation of my civil rights. Interestingly, my spouse and I did get life insurance and my health teir was better than hers for no obvious reason we could determine.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    alternatives(), 27 Sep 2018 @ 5:43am

    insurance surveillance

    Go get your section 604 report from Lexis-Nexis. They re-package your info for risk assessment for the insurance industry.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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