A Canadian-owned life insurance company wants to track your health data and base your life insurance premiums on it:
John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones, the company said on Wednesday.
There are lots of caveats to their actual approach given the highly regulated nature of the insurance industry, which may make this sort of situation sound a lot less alarming initially. I think it's safe to say that the industry will be headed much farther in this direction as time progresses, however, given the proliferation of health-tracking devices, connected cars, and so on. It doesn't take much thinking to imagine that massive tracking of your behavior might eventually lead to us all to some very scary places in the future.
Please think long and hard about every transaction you make which involves giving up your personal data. An agreement you sign today for a chance at a cheaper product might cost you a lot more than just money in the long run.