Life insurers are testing an intensely personal new use for the vast dossiers of data being amassed about Americans: predicting people’s longevity.
Insurers have long used blood and urine tests to assess people’s health-a costly process.
Today, however, data-gathering companies have such extensive files on most U.S. consumers-online shopping details, catalog purchases, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities and information from social-networking sites-that some insurers are exploring whether data can reveal nearly as much about a person as a lab analysis of their bodily fluids. This data increasingly is gathered online, often with consumers only vaguely aware that separate bits of information about them are being collected and collated in ways that can be surprisingly revealing.
Making the approach feasible is a trove of new information being assembled by giant data-collection firms. These companies sort details of online and offline purchases to help categorize people as runners or hikers, dieters or couch potatoes.They scoop up public records such as hunting permits, boat registrations and property transfers. They run surveys designed to coax people to describe their lifestyles and health conditions. Increasingly, some gather online information, including from social-networking sites.
“Whether people actually realize it or not, they are significantly increasing their personal transparency,” says Mike Fitzgerald, a Celent senior analyst. “It’s all public, and it’s electronically mineable.”
Story by Leslie Scism and Mark Maremont for the Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704648604575620750998072986.html#ixzz160tZDOSO
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