Facebook has blocked Admiral from scouring social media profiles to set car insurance prices, forcing the company into a hasty climbdown.
The internet giant said that Admiral’s contravened Facebook’s privacy policies, preventing the launch of the technology just hours before it was due to be launched.
Admiral had planned to use Facebook status updates and “likes” to build up a “risk assessment” of first-time motorists, offering insurance discounts to those likely to be safer drivers.
As the move was criticised by privacy campaigners as “intrusive”, the company dropped the plans and said the Firstcarquote app would have “reduced functionality”. Facebook vowed to protect its users’ privacy and said that Admiral’s app would now only be able to use the social network as a way of signing users in.
The move represents a setback for the insurance industry, which hopes to gather growing amounts of data about its customers to set prices in future.
“Protecting the privacy of the people on Facebook is of utmost importance to us. We have clear guidelines that prevent information being obtained from Facebook from being used to make decisions about eligibility,” a spokesman for the social network said.
“We have made sure anyone using this app is protected by our guidelines and that no Facebook user data is used to assess their eligibility. Facebook accounts will only be used for login and verification purposes.
“Our understanding is that Admiral will then ask users who sign up to answer questions which will be used to assess their eligibility.”
While Admiral’s app would only have used information that users had consented to sharing, Facebook’s policies bar companies from making “decisions about eligibility, including whether to approve or reject an application or how much interest to charge on a loan”.
Privacy campaigners had attacked Admiral, warning that its plans could be a step towards widespread discrimination.
“We need to think about the wider consequences of allowing companies to make decisions that affect us financially or otherwise based on what we have said on social media,” said Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group.
“Such intrusive practices could see decisions being made against certain groups based on biases about race, gender, religion or sexuality – or because their posts in some way mark them as unconventional. Ultimately, this could change how people use social media, encouraging self-censorship in anticipation of future decisions.”
Source: Telegraph