The Admiral insurance group has unveiled plans to launch a product called firstcarquote, which will monitor people’s social media activity, tracking the personality traits that, in its view, make dangerous drivers, and adjusting policy prices accordingly.

We are in favour of insurers finding ways to legitimately make our roads safer, but surely this is an invasion of privacy: an Orwellian policing of thought. This won’t prevent accidents from happening, or make an overconfident or careless driver slow down or concentrate harder. It’s simply profiling young people in a bid to find ways to extract higher premiums from them.

Edit: reports now suggest that the plans have been shelved – for now – after Facebook decided to revoke the permissions required. Good.

Regardless of whether firstcarquote goes ahead, it is illustrative of the ways in which big businesses are now looking at our social media use, and it underlines the fact that people’s personal data is bigger business than ever for marketers. The ways in which we spend, or are planning to spend, money is invaluable to businesses, and technology is now so interconnected, that our personal data is now a hotter commodity than ever before.

Whatsapp and Facebook recently caused controversy by unveiling plans to use Whatsapp data to drive Facebook advertising.

Remarketing: scary/genius

Remarketing is a good example of the way in which our personal data can be used. Basically, it’s the process by which advertisers will track the products you’ve been browsing, then tailor advertising on other websites accordingly.

Even as marketeers ourselves, we find that remarketing usually straddles the line between complete genius and outright scary. For example, if you use your Amazon mobile app to look at a product, it’s likely that product will then appear in the adverts in your Facebook sidebar pretty quickly.

It certainly works: this blogger recently bought a new coat on the basis that it kept appearing on pretty much every web page he visited. Of course, what you can’t do is tell The Internet that you’ve then bought it. It’s been two weeks and the coat is still following me around the internet.

It’s a very good way to illustrate the ways in which our personal data and browsing habits are shared almost instantaneously.

Personal data security guide

Your approach to your personal data security will depend on your outlook. For example, everyone knows someone who refuses to use a supermarket store card because they don’t want their purchases to be tracked. For those people, the best way to avoid being ‘tracked’ is to stop shopping online, and pay for everything with cash, and always use an in-private browsing window.

For everyone else, it’s a mix of personal preference and common sense, but almost everyone can afford to be a little more careful with their data and online shopping/browsing habits.

You can do some or all of the following to reduce your exposure to data tracking:

  1. Review your security settings on every social media channel you use. This sounds obvious, but do you definitely know what, for example, your Facebook page looks like to a complete stranger? You might be giving away more than you know. For example, did you know all your profile pictures are set to public by default, even if all your other picture settings are private?
    Click on the tiny security icon at the top right of your page (it looks like a padlock) and click on ‘Who can see my stuff?’. Have a play with all of the options in that menu until you are happy with your settings.
  2. The same goes for Whatsapp – as per the above story, you can read Whatsapp’s own guide to not sharing data here.
  3. Be careful what apps you download, and what websites you visit. Goes without saying, but some are dodgy. Don’t just agree to all the permissions that apps ask for – think about what the implications might be. Just use common sense!
  4. Don’t use Facebook to sign in to other websites. You know how it goes: you’ve been lured in by a really tempting clickbait headline, but in order to find out what happens next (you won’t believe it!), you need to log in to an external site, using your Facebook data. Stop! Go back! It’s not worth it.
  5. Use InPrivate browsing when necessary.
  6. Routinely run checks for spyware and other unwanted nasties that may have found their way onto your computer. There are plenty of free programs available to run these checks.

Podium is a Newcastle SEO, content and social media specialist that works with companies from all sectors to improve their online brand presence and website traffic. Contact us here for more information on how we can help your business.

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