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Thread: Our 'Brave New World' with Medical Profiling

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Shepherd View Post
    Eric, I know they have been trying to collect marketing data for decades. However, it was all anonymous and really vague because everything was paid for with cash or a check and they weren't collecting data from checks and giving that information to the stores you shopped from. Now, with electronic money, everything you touch or do becomes traceable back to you. Not anonymous, it's to you. Target knows I bought a bag of M&M's and that data is collected and stored. My guess is that it's not Target that's doing the data collection, it's a third party company, so that third party company that I didn't give access to (knowingly), now sells that information to the highest bidder. Now someone that I had no transactions with knows my buying habits. I think that's pretty disgusting as far as a privacy issue. So much so that I've gone back to using cash in a lot of places.

    I'm fine if you want to track me, as long as you give me the option to opt out of anything you do, or at the very least, inform me that you'll be selling all data collected from my transaction to the highest bidder. You have to label my M&M's with all the nutrition information, so at the least, make me aware that I'm being tracked.

    It all seems harmless when you're talking about buying M&M's, but start buying various health related products, then that information goes to the health and life insurance companies and you can't understand why your premiums went through the roof one day. Not to mention the fact that you could be buying them for a parent or a friend who can't get out on their own.
    in general any society that needs to spy on its "citizens" like what we see with the NSA or whatever other agency that is spawned be regarded very warily. as a citizen if i have no privacy of thought, of finances, of relations with others then what am I? I do not like what some say, i have nothing to hide so feel free to look. We should be very very concerned that we are unable to have any privacy.

  2. #17
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    Basically, even then, knowing the carrier route you were now at plus some tracking that identified the carrier-route locales for your prior residences (which is largely public records), they could build a profile of you that was horribly accurate in terms of marital status, number of kids, age, income and the like. So the fact that there are companies trying to figure out how to market to you better shouldn't be a real surprise, and we should all be careful of the breadcrumbs we leave them.
    Some of the marketers are good at this, some are a bit annoying. Most annoying is after making a purchase the retailer sends a special coupon good for buying more of what was just purchased.

    Google tracking is kind of strange. If you look at items on some sites you will soon start seeing ads on web pages for their products.

    People (generally older people) freak out over the thought of identity theft and someone getting access to their bank account. For the most part, that's the least of my worries. Get access to it? No problem, I'll get the money back. Might be an inconvenience for a couple of days, but I can rebuild from that pretty easily.
    You could go into a recovery business or write a book if this is true. The Federal Trade Commission estimates an average of 6 months and 200 hours of work to clean up an identity theft episode. This of course depends on what was done, how fast it was caught and whether your information was sold to other ID thieves.
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  3. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Chance in Iowa View Post
    I didn't say I was ultra-thin nor do I live in a fantasy world. I don't "brag" about my weight & build, but since I have not personally met anyone on this forum, I described my size to indicate I have personal experience with being "hated on" by overweight people. I am not underweight, nor overweight. I am simply saying that it's not only "thin" people who say and do mean things.
    I'm sure plenty of overweight people say and do mean things. But to turn a positive (like being a healthy weight or being smart or attractive or successful) into a negative as you've described is a new one to me.

  4. #19
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    Dang it, now I'm hungry for M&Ms.

    Mike--I'm right with you. I've been thin my whole life and have heard many negative comments about it from people who were obese. I used to hate it, now I just feel sorry for those folks--to have to live with that extra weight and the bad attitude.
    Jason

    "Don't get stuck on stupid." --Lt. Gen. Russel Honore


  5. #20
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    LOL!

    Figures,,,,,I went from being the smoking outcast to being the fatso outcast!

    Can't help winnin for losin I guess!
    I have really blimped up the last year. No matter what I try though, I just can't shave off more than a few pounds.
    I miss the days when I could drop 25 pounds in a couple weeks by just eliminating soft drinks and cutting down on the portions.
    My granddad always said, :As one door closes, another opens".
    Wonderful man, terrible cabinet maker...

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric DeSilva View Post
    --activities that, with long term habits, endanger the person and arguably also impose societal costs by raising the health care costs of everyone. Food for thought, so to speak.
    This is the single argument that threatens to take away every personal 'freedom' an individual can have in favor of the 'better good'. Hope this is not too political - I apologize in advance as I do not mean to offend anyone here.

    Removed verbiage
    Last edited by Pat Barry; 07-21-2014 at 7:19 PM.

  7. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Eric DeSilva View Post
    First, I don't think that is correct. It's been my experience that people seem to get very bent out of shape when obesity makes someone a target. So I don't see hating on obese people as being condoned generally.
    Tell that to Chris Christie, a famous fat target. Or Jay Leno, a fat-joke sharp-shooter. How about Al Franken's book, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot?" Would a publisher dare publish a book titled "Such and such is a Worthless Alcoholic?"

    Quote Originally Posted by Eric DeSilva View Post
    Second, discrimination is sort of a loaded word, and the way you have made the statement seems to imply the discrimination is inherently wrong--it is almost as if there is an unwritten "unjust" in front of discrimination. But I'll point out that discrimination isn't inherently wrong--discriminating between two things is perfectly acceptable in lots of different contexts, say, those running red lights (who get tickets) and those that don't (who don't get tickets). Discrimination seems--at least to me--to warrant the pejorative connotation where we change our behavior towards people who exhibit characteristics that are immutable (race, gender, age, sexual preference) or protected (religion, marital status). But that puts obesity into a tricky category, because there are clearly people who are obese because of medical conditions (or even certain environmental factors) who can't change. But there are also people who can change--eat less, eat better, exercise more. I remember reading an essay probing why it is OK to walk up to someone smoking and say "that's disgusting," but not to walk up to an obese person eating a Big Mac and tell them the same thing. In some ways there are similarities--activities that, with long term habits, endanger the person and arguably also impose societal costs by raising the health care costs of everyone. Food for thought, so to speak.
    First of all, that essay was pretty twisted and started with a false premise, because it is NOT okay to walk up to a smoker and say "that is disgusting." Generally speaking, it is never appropriate to approach someone and tell them they are disgusting.

    And while leaving the little fat kid for last when selecting teams for gym class may seem at least an understandable form of discrimination, what about the fat (but whip-smart) kid selected last for an academic challenge?

    Because being overweight isn't always relevant. Sure, I wouldn't want an obese firefighter charged with saving me from a rapturous fire. OTOH, I don't really care if my librarian is overweight. Nonetheless, an overweight librarian is likely to be on the receiving end of at least some amount of discrimination proportional to their BMI, when it comes to promotions and often favoritism shown by supervisors that don't have a weight problem.
    Last edited by Phil Thien; 07-21-2014 at 9:19 PM.

  8. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    You could go into a recovery business or write a book if this is true. The Federal Trade Commission estimates an average of 6 months and 200 hours of work to clean up an identity theft episode. This of course depends on what was done, how fast it was caught and whether your information was sold to other ID thieves.
    Jim, it might take 6 months to get your credit score and all that back, but you'll have the money back in your bank account for any fraudulent transactions pretty darn fast. Someone charges things to your credit card, just call it in, file the report, and it's reversed. Overall, it's pretty painless, in a relative term, and there are open and published steps to take and fix it all. However, when someone gathers your data without your knowledge, exactly how do you fix that? If they take medical information and sell it to insurance companies, how can one ever recover from that? My point being that's a lot more trouble to deal with, especially when you aren't aware it's happening, than dealing with things that smack you in the face when they happen, like someone accessing your bank account information.
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  9. #24
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    The business of companies is minding their bottom line, and that may include yours.

    If you think Human resources is a department advocating for the interest of employees,
    you're not following the trends. They're looking for costs to cut, at every turn.

    It's the same logic behind releasing elderly, non-violent inmates, dumping potential liabilities on the actuarial table.

    This isn't even news, and it's not the government behind the approach.
    It's about risk-aversion, and detecting aberrations that increase risk to the insurer.

    http://www.actuarialfoundation.org/r...undamental.pdf

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric DeSilva View Post
    The article doesn't seem to get to the core of these distinctions.
    I'm not convinced everyone responding to this article noted such distinctions, or even read to the last line.
    It feels more like the electric rabbit was set in motion, the gates opened and THEY'RE OFF!

    dog racing.jpg

  11. #26
    There was a radio program on this morning in the local (Milwaukee) area where the host was asking whether being fat was a disability. He was objecting to overweight/obese people claiming they're disabled just like (for example) a war veteran that had lost their legs. We can all see that point (I hope). But it was clear he really didn't like fatties.

    But he went on to say that he never had a problem with his weight, being "a buck eighty-five" (his words) and 5' 10". I didn't have the heart to call and inform him that according to the BMI scale, he is overweight and just about 25 pounds shy of being obese.

    Twenty five pounds isn't an insignificant amount of weight, but as I've gotten older I've actually lost weight as most of my friends have started to pack it on. Older people that were typically rather slender throughout their entire lives are often hiding quite a few extra pounds under their elastic trousers and loose-fitting sweatshirts. In fact, a friend that often teased me about my weight when I was younger is really struggling and it looks a bit like the proverbial tables have turned.

  12. #27
    I really don't have any problem with employer programs designed to improve the health of their workforce. In fact, I imagine we will eventually learn a great deal from these programs.

    I do know at least some programs haven't worked as great as employers had hoped because of some initial incorrect assumptions. There are, for example, extremely sedentary people that don't weigh a nickel over their ideal weight but have little to no muscle tone and even develop terrible back and other problems. So rewarding people on low weight alone really isn't an answer.

    Offering people free gym memberships, installing exercise equipment at work and making it available before/during/after work, making improvements in the cafeteria, rewarding people for exercising, making certain people receive routine exams, arranging team walks/runs/bike rides for charity, offering lifestyle coaching, providing physical trainers, starting weight loss/exercise challenges, etc., all seem like great ideas to me.

    I could really care less if an employee data mines me. Of course, I've been self-employed almost my entire life, but I get terrific job offers and if one of them came along with a caveat that I submit to a program to improve my health, I sure wouldn't consider than a negative.
    Last edited by Phil Thien; 07-21-2014 at 9:37 PM.

  13. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Elfert View Post
    I think most people figure you can't control if you are male or female, your skin color (ethnicity), your age, or your sexual orientation, but these same people figure that someone's weight is something the person can control. Someone who is obese may have an eating disorder and really can't control their weight.
    This is a rare exception, though. Most of us are overweight because we don't care, not because we can't do anything about it.

    As a friend used to tell me when I wasn't progressing as fast as I wanted to professionally, "you're not doing it because you don't want to, not because you can't. If you wanted to, you'd do it".

    Anyone with an eating disorder could be diagnosed, but the rest of us who are just sedentary and don't want to be inconvenienced by not satisfying boredom with food would be diagnosed as....being too lazy to do something about it.

  14. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Shepherd View Post
    Chuck, it's not the internet that's the issue. It's everything else. From your debit card swipes at the grocery store, Best Buy, Target, to the t.v. you are watching. Yes, they are actually logging the t.v. shows that are watched, building that data profile of you as a customer and using that data (or selling it). I worry far more about the stuff that's non-internet related than I do anything else.
    You're right. The Internet is simply an infrastructure that allows business and commerce to operate more efficiently. We consumers, benefit from commerce demand for this communications infrastructure. If commerce did not require the Internet, there would be no Internet. That is the simple reality of the matter.

    But the Internet also serves their masters in other, unintended ways. Namely, the ability to relate seemingly unrelated bits and pieces of a persons life, to create a disturbingly detailed analysis of any individual they so choose.

    Without the Internet, all those relational databases wouldn't be able to talk to each other, relating their stories about you or I.

    The Internet is as ubiquitous as electricity. It is the arteries through which commerce must flow. Facebook has it right. We are the product.
    Last edited by Greg Peterson; 07-22-2014 at 1:05 AM.
    Measure twice, cut three times, start over. Repeat as necessary.

  15. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Chance in Iowa View Post
    I didn't say I was ultra-thin nor do I live in a fantasy world. I don't "brag" about my weight & build, but since I have not personally met anyone on this forum, I described my size to indicate I have personal experience with being "hated on" by overweight people. I am not underweight, nor overweight. I am simply saying that it's not only "thin" people who say and do mean things.
    I agree with Mike Chance's remarks 100% as there is usually another side.

    I'm not ultra-thin, but I stay in very good shape, run road races/marathons, and try to eat good for the most part. I do it for myself to stay as healthy as possible. I was a decent cross country runner in high school (16:08 for 5k) and have kept running ever since. I do not look down on anyone who is overweight and never have, but truth be told I do feel badly for them.

    For the record, I've experienced very rude remarks from family, friends, and strangers while both running and not. My point: Although I obviously can't control comedian's comments on tv, your comment is still very far from a blanket statement.

    Respectfully,

    David
    Life is a gift, not a guarantee.

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