PurpleCar

Don’t Post Sickly!

How many times have you posted something like “Got the flu” or “Broke my leg” on Facebook or other social media site?

You don’t know? You should, because your health insurance company probably does.

Evidence that insurance companies are scanning social media sites is mounting. My Twitter friend Mark D’Cunha shared a ScienceDaily.com article about Johns Hopkins researchers who are tapping the firehose of tweets for tracking flu outbreaks. If the medical community is looking, you can bet insurance companies are taking a peek, too.

A law professor at the University of Washington is also suspicious that our individual posts are making their way into the hands of insurers. In her article on the legal punditry website Justia.com, Anita Ramasastry cites examples of social media posts being used as justification for decisions to drop members from insurance coverage. One of the more famous cases involves former IBM-er Nathalie Blanchard  who was kicked off the disability rolls of Canadian insurer Manulife. The company stated the collection of Facebook pictures Blanchard posted in which she was portrayed as having fun was not the sole factor in its decision to cease funding her depression claim. Notice how Manulife said the photographic evidence was not the sole factor. The underlying meaning: the photos are part of the factors of evidence cited by Manulife in justification of their discontinuation of Blanchard’s benefits.

People seem slow on the uptake that for-profit insurance companies will be using any (legal) means necessary to make their shareholders money. Has social media, with it’s lofty claims of “democratization,” erased our memory of the cold machinery of capitalism? Of course insurance companies would run algorithms on your public social updates. If Blue Cross hired me tomorrow, I’d tell them the same thing. Your social media updates contain the data they’d have to pay or subpoena you for in decades past; you’re giving it to them for free and without a summons to appear in court.

Ms. Ramasastry cites a report by big insurance-brokerage firm Marsh & McLennan that was released in October 2011. The report outlined how insurers could look at lifestyle choices, proof of risky behavior, and a person’s Facebook Likes to determine their risk level as an insured member. She notes that insurance fraud investigators are already using social media to uncover proof for cases against claimants. It follows that they will also use the social data to determine if a person would be a fit client.

This concept of screening potential customers isn’t new. Demographic research has driven the insurance industry for centuries. Technologically, it wouldn’t be hard to design and code an algorithm that collects the number of times you post “I’m sick” within one year’s time and contrast that to your friends’ posts or other relevant data. Details are nuanced out of data sets by comparing and contrasting different data points. This is what scientists, especially psychologists, sociologists and public health researchers are trained to do.

In a few years, not-necessarily-college-educated data journalists will have the skill and access they need to conduct the data gathering themselves. Every human resources department will have a data journalist or “growth hacker” on staff. Their code will not only run a credit check on you but a similarly-designed “health check” as well. And why not? If HR can predict with pretty good accuracy how many sick days you are going to take, they will do it. If the hiring decision comes down to you and another candidate who seems healthier and less of a party animal, I suggest you start peddling that poor profile elsewhere (and consider scrubbing it clean first).

People are under some illusion that social media posts are protected communication. It is the same illusion I encountered while working as a systems administrator; associates held beliefs, almost to the point of superstitious, that their email correspondence was protected and was not to be monitored by their employers. Just like now, that belief was not based in fact or law. Corporate email is not the US Postal Service, and neither is Facebook.

The courts in Quebec are still working out the Blanchard case, 2+ years later. In the US, it wouldn’t take as long. An American citizen, in regard to the privacy of public social media postings, doesn’t have a broken leg to stand on.

Photo Credit: Alicia Nidjm at Flickr

Don’t be alarmed if you get a notification from Microsoft about a “botnet” named Bamital. Microsoft and Symantec have worked with authorities to seize spamware server grids in NJ and VA, and in an unprecedented move, will be notifying victims of the website-redirection hoax. Read more about it here:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/02/massive-search-fraud-botnet-siezed-by-microsoft-and-symantec/

***But remember: Be suspicious of any email that sends links. To check if the information in the email is valid, open up another browser window and type in the name of the site, e.g., paypal.com or microsoft.com, then search the site on the subject of the email. If the email is from a friend, reply to the friend first to see if it is a valid link. This is best practices and your friend should not be offended.***

I dare say, we women are quite good at this computing thing!

The Internet is a buzz with the GoDaddy.com advertisement that featured very stereotypical gender and image roles for women and men. In summary: The woman was “stupid” and model-gorgeous; the male was a computer geek and patently unattractive. They kissed, noisily and grotesquely, in an attempt to demonstrate the metaphor of the design and technological hosting services of the site.

GoDaddy is known for their very sexist commercials and ad campaigns. They are going after a specific market, obviously, and I suppose they’ll say it’s working for them.

My point is this: It’s working for them now, but what about the long term? Women are offended and associate GoDaddy with exclusion of their participation, and women are capable of long memory. What will happen to GoDaddy when the feminization of the tech industry comes to pass?

What? You don’t think that most tech, especially support which is what GoDaddy offers, will be run by women? Think again. It’s primed to be taken over by women and it will be. More women than men graduate from college. More women than men have flexible schedule ability in their lives. History also tells us the tech professions will slowly but surely be taken over by women.

According to this report by Ohio University, in the United States, women made up only 2.4% of all bookkeeper/bank cashiers and 4.5% of all stenographers in 1870. By 1930, women held 51.9 % and 95.4% of those jobs, respectively.

There are many industries that have been “feminized”. Manufacturing that involved machinery, like clothing factories, were originally attended to by men. Labor like cleaning and high-level professions like medicine used to be dominated by males. Teachers, salespeople, nurses, doctors, etc., used to all be 100% males. Think in your own life. How many male secretaries do you know? How many male OB/GYNs?

Some Sociology scholars spend their careers looking at this phenomenon and the reasons for it. I won’t dive too far into their work right now. Suffice it is to say that if a career has to do with dealing customers or negotiating with people, women will find their way into that industry and dominate it.

Enter tech. A barely-presentable, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging male neanderthal of a computer genius being relegated to the server room never to emerge is a stereotype built on a myth. Server guys have always had to deal with managers and site owners, and the ones who were gruff and had zero people skills were phased out. But still, the stereotype remains and GoDaddy is banking on the fact that “good tech” needs that neanderthal at the keyboard. What is really happening? Managers are learning that most of tech support isn’t in the tech; it’s in the technique. And with women out-graduating and out-producing men in this country (especially in “minority” populations), managers will realize that anyone can learn the tech, but not everyone is life-trained for the technique.

Tech now is about being able to code AND relate to customers. To work in tech now you have to be what I like to call a PACK animal: Personable, Adaptable, Creative and Knowledgable. You don’t need too much bursting physical strength. Sometimes you do need long-range physical stamina. But when it comes to being a (*snort, snort all you want, sexist mules*) PACK animal, women are perfectly prepared to do the “heavy-lifting” those customer-service-oriented positions entail.

In a few years, the numbers will shift permanently. They have in the past and they will again. It’s all quite predictable.

You know what won’t shift? Women’s memory. We are watching you, Go “Daddy”. We won’t forget.

And like male-and-female-run Anonymous says: Expect us.

References:

My minor studies in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh

A relevant Google search, including the ohiou.edu link to the .ppt presentation: https://www.google.com/search?q=feminization+of+secretary+labor&btnG=Search&hl=en&tbo=d&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS503US504&revid=365831375

Photo credit: Mike Licht on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/5286943856/sizes/n/

Some kind of write up about British tech, a little skewed: http://mariehicks.net/writing/meritocracy.html

I’ve started blogging off-purplecar-topic over at Stabley Times. My latest article:

Turn On, Tune In, Tweet Out: Life and The Superbowl On the Second Screen

Watching tv with ipods, phones, tablets and laptops!