Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Next Data Seller Up to Bat–General Motors With OnStar, Changes Privacy Policy and Wants Permission to Sell Your Data

Are we not already sick of this.  We all know that drugs store chains are almost at the point of making more money by selling data any more for one.  Walgreens publicly admitted a few months ago that their “data selling” business was worth just under $800 million so perhaps that may be part of the reason here for more jumping in and gee we can’t even imagine the millions that Facebook makes off of selling imagedata profiles as there are apps, games and so for the embedded in their platform all over the place. I think the secondary purpose of a drug store is to provide drugs in order to get that big profitable data to sell, but problem is we are out of balance and our economy can’t live on algorithms alone. 

Let’s make this a good rant while I’m at it and throw a few more items out here like Target that will scan your driver’s license if you want to buy a bottle of wine.  They have a pharmacy so we know they are selling prescription data already.  I’ll never buy another bottle there again and I will make my purchase from the small independent business man with a convenience store near me.  He needs it worse than Target does and he won’t scan my driver’s license. 

Are Target Stores Now Selling Data Too? California Store Scanned My Driver’s License When I Bought One Bottle of Wine–How Much Business in the US Is Living Off of Data and Algorithms, Partly Why We Have Job Issues

Now recently in the news they talked about cars checking your glucose levels and so forth maybe one day so is the plan to have OnStar be the collector of that data too?  You know we can’t stop all of this but there is a suggestion I have and it’s a good one.  Require a resellers license and make it a steep price.  Next require a public disclosure filing on the web updated as needed to all the the companies data is sold to.  Last but not least, put a heavy tax on it.  Let’s generate some money for the middle class who are now becoming the poor. 

Privacy Wanted–So Let’s Require Those Who Sell Web Data to Register and Tax the Transactions and Publicly Disclose Who They Sell To With a Federal Registryimage

Even HHS gets confused with some of this stuff with talking privacy and Facebook in the same sentence too and that’s what you get without executives at the top without a little bit of IT background today, they get confused.  How about riots as a disaster?  With recent events maybe someone might want to rethink this one out.

HHS Seems To Be Confused on Social Networks–Facebook for Disaster Support Contest, Give Me a Break

Here’s more good news on data selling…the country can’t base the economy on Algos only we need balance and to start producing more tangibles and jobs will appear that way too. 

"Banks plan to compete with Groupon and LivingSocial by targeting coupons and deals at credit card holders based on their shopping habits. They found a way to do it without violating financial privacy laws: 'They're "selling" shopping habits the same way Facebook "sells" personal data about its users: in-network. It's a clever privacy work-around. Just as Facebook allows advertisers to specifically target certain kinds of users based on their profile information (without actually providing that profile information to the advertisers), banks plan to allow advertisers to send deals and coupons to their customers based on what they've bought before. That way, no user data actually leaves the network — instead, deals just enter the network. Each time a customer cashes in on one of those deals, the bank gets a commission.'"

Let’s not forget these folks in the credit business too that are over selling their capabilities with mis-matched data…to pharma and insurance companies that take information from the web and combine it with your credit score and score you again to determine if you will be a patient who will take their meds. 

FICO Analytics Press Release Marketing Credit Scoring Algorithms to Predict Medication Adherence–Update (Opinion)

I know I have posted this a couple of times with the lecture from Stanford University on how data is collected, but this is a good place for it to appear once again with “you are the product”.  BD 

You are the product…

Now according to this article if you say it is ok, and cancel your OnStar contract they can still continue to collect data, so saying OK and cancelling later doesn’t stop the process either. 

If you sell your car, you are selling a vehicle that still collects data so you have to manually go through and disconnect it, just like you would a computer.  Again, time to get those resellers licenses going and start taxing these folks making millions as the middle class deserves a bit of the money too and the only way I can think of to get it is by taxing and licensing.  BD 

OnStar Corp., the General Motors communication service for drivers, may soon start selling customer data to other companies.

In emails sent to customers, OnStar detailed changes to its privacy statement that go into effect in December. Under the revised policy, the company may start collecting data from any vehicle equipped with an OnStar device and could share that information with credit card processors, law enforcement and others.

"We may share or sell anonymized data (including location, speed, and safety belt usage) with third parties for any purpose, which may prove useful for such things as research relating to public safety or traffic services," the privacy statement said.

"I canceled the OnStar subscription on my new GMC vehicle today after receiving an email from the company about their new terms and conditions," wrote scientist and blogger Jonathan Zdziarski in a post. "Anonymized GPS data? There's no such thing!"

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/09/onstar-privacy-policy.html

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