How can advertisers knowing my information and tracking me to better serve me ads cause me personal harm or injury?
In: Technology
you look for diving gear, this data is collected “to better serve you ads”…and yes, you suddenly get ads for overpriced trips to scuba-diving locations or gear you might wanna buy, nothing wrong with that.
but if your insurance company buys that data and then decides “scuba diving is a dangerous activity, we gonna up your premium/cancel your insurance”, then that sucks.
you looking for insight into a rare disease then buying medications….can lead to your children not getting insurance because of you.
but there are tons of other situations where it can be detrimental to let companies track you, there was this famous story of a girl in the US where Walmart traced her spending patterns, determined she was most likely pregnant and thus send her corresponding offers….unfortunately she was still living with her parents who where shocked to find out she was pregnant this way.
generally the issue isn’t that the data is used for ads (though that in itself is generally not good, for example airplane companies often increase the price for a flight if they see how have checked out this flight before, if you delete your cookies you might get a totally different rate), but how it can be used by other parties further down the line.
because this data is collected and then it is shared/sold. and companies have gotten really good at extrapolating stuff out of these patterns.
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