Quote Originally Posted by Scott Shepherd View Post
I have no problem giving the bank information if I apply for a loan. That's not what's happening here. Essentially what's happening (and not with the bank, but with other institutions) is that the company is essentially selling your transaction history to the highest bidder. You wouldn't be happy if the bank took your transactions and sold them to a marketing firm who now knows you buy beer every Tuesday, frequent McDonalds for lunch, etc. If a bank did that, this country would come unglued. However, people are doing that very thing every single day WITHOUT your permission (I don't recall seeing ANY posting on ANY terminal at ANY store that says "By swiping your card, you have given us the right to collect and use data in any way we see fit". Now, if you sign up for their frequent shopper cards, there's probably that line in there. However, I'm just a guy walking in, no relationship with the store's programs, and all I do is buy a bag of chips and now you've logged that data against my debit card and started recording my shopping habits, linking them to my name and card number.

To me, that's a huge violation of privacy. I should be able to opt in or out of anything you plan to do with data collected about me.
Pay with cash and refuse to give any information, zip code or phone number, etc.

I went to harbor freight this weekend, we just got a new one here, which means all of the merchandise is new and the chemical/cosmolene smell was 10 times as strong as usual. I was quite surprised when my $7 order prompted the cashier to ask for my phone number and when I got home, a second copy of my receipt had been sent to my email. Next time, I won't give them my phone number, and we'll see what they do - there's nothing there I can't live without.

I expect it at lowes and other places who want to have a digital copy of everything you do, but I could really do without it there.

As far as life expectancy goes, the OP's email was bizarre in terms of that, because as far as I know, life insurance products have factored in life expectancy for at least several hundred years. It's pretty hard to provide such a thing (insurance based on someone's life) without doing something to estimate when the payment might occur. Iterations before that were no so equitable or economical about what was charged and what was paid.

Data collection about what we do has been going on for an awful long time, too, it just had less resolution and precision and it wasn't used for individual direct marketing like it is now. The resolution and precision of the data, and therefore the applicable uses of it have increased due to computing power and connectivity.

In terms of government having a stake in what we do and how healthy we are, we are all, if we live long enough, destined for medicare. Medicare has a serious and real cost to all of us, and to the extent that we can avoid unnecessary complications from chronic disease, etc, prior to being terminal, it will be better for the system. They have a real mess on their hands with projected deficits as they are. If utilization increases significantly because we have poor lifestyles, but can be extended at length because of things like statins (which had and have a significant observable effect on extending life spans) while incurring high cost of treatment along the way, the problem that creates is just reality - it's inevitable that we would need to try to moderate costs one way or another.