I had an attack recently here and I’ll keep company names out of here to protect the guilty, as that’s what we do anymore:)  I had my annual statement from my auto insurer come up for me to do my odometer reading and add a few more bits of information.  I was sent a form via mail to verify that the information was correct as listed.  If you read here enough I have said many times that the middle class has become data chasers for flawed data and this is an example coming up and has to to with queries and data matching that is done once the information is in hand.

Ok so I look over the form and see a 2nd driver added.  I have never added a second driver in almost 20 years and have been with the same insurer for that amount of time too, so no changes there. A few months ago I sold my home and it was interesting to see the name of the second driver that was “automatically” added to my policy.  A couple purchased my home and it was name of the wife on my policy.  Again the sale is a few months old now and strange how this got there. 

Obviously being a data person myself I assume an address check (possible used as the unique identifier field) was done as we all know those who mine data are not the most timely in getting updates out there.  If you have tried to fix errors on your credit, then you know what I am talking about and why it takes so long.  If you haven’t figured out why the updates take so long, that is why as some credit companies don’t update at least every quarter and one state threw out CoreLogic for mining state data for exactly that reason a while back, not to mention thy had to put additional software on the state servers to limit the mining bots as servers were slowing down to a crawl, making it difficult for consumers to get in. If I remember correctly, this is why the government sites were put up there right, to give consumers access?  The next time you can’t get through on busy government servers, blame data selling bots who mine and make millions in profits with overloading with bots to mine information.  This is the pits as they get their data for nothing and the profits for free from government servers. So where do insurance companies go to buy some of this data?  The MIB might be one of the places as I wrote back in 2010, as they collect more than just health insurance information these days and they market and sell analytical software. 

If your data is messed up in the MIB, good luck as I have heard some real stories about how some never got theirs fixed and others took forever, all the time pending claims and other financial bills sat out there with collectors attached and calling. 

The MIB – Health Insurance Bureau Business Intelligence Mining May Go Beyond Just Healthcare Information

In addition to an individual’s credit history, data collected by the Medical Information Bureau (MIB) may include medical conditions, driving records, criminal activity, drug use, participation in hazardous sports, and personal or family genetic history, among other facts.

So here I am with flawed data putting the new owner of my home that I sold as a secondary driver on my auto insurance…”Bad Algorithms”…and watch for activity like this.  Of course I did correct the information and faxed it back and the form came via the US Mail as well.  Funny with all the predictive behavior analytics running with insurance companies that they still have to do so much via snail mail.   My home owners insurance “was” with a different company so no chance of an internal mix up.

I just assumed a major search was conducted on data the insurer purchased and some algorithm put the second driver on my policy.  Now of course I have not lived at that address in a few months.  I called my agent who had all the information I had sent when I moved and “that part of the records system” had been updated as I had notified them and he looked and said the other side of their system must not have updated, but indeed it had with adding a second driver, but alas the data or query to post was flawed!  It is also important to note that analytics with predictive queries have kind of gone over the top a bit too and if you read the link below, you will see what I mean as they are now assessing your risk for living too…kind of morbid. 

MIB Solutions and Hooper Holmes Working Together to Assess Morality Risk – Analytics and Consumer Files Used for Underwriting And To Estimate How Long You May Live And What Your Body Will Cost Over Time

We are going to see a ton more errors like this with our current need for speed and not allowing the aggregators enough time to perfect a lot of this so be prepared and get ready to go chase corporate data mistakes on your own dime, otherwise nothing will eventually work for you in the business world as those who control the code and algorithms rule the world. This is exactly why the data sellers should be taxed quarterly, like a sales tax as it is so ingrained in every part of business today.  So if Walgreens can make short of $800 million in selling data, imagine how big that pot is…huge with banks, brokers, social media, hedge funds and more!  

Science is begging more more money and I can’t think of a better place for such tax money to go! 

One More Good Reason to Tax the Data Sellers– Create Additional Funding for the NIH and FDA From Sources That Otherwise Are Too Greedy to Share & Contribute

So with this error and I have had others I too am a data chaser fixing the flawed data of corporate America and again seeing what name was added even gives me further clarity on the flawed queries and algorithms that are being produced.  Quarterly taxing and fines for errors would make these folks accountable and right now they run a gambit with no regulation that is killing the middle class and that’s part of the the problem in the US, devaluate some of these algorithms and let’s get accurate data out there so people are not denied. 



Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

So anyone else have any ideas to contribute as to how the new owners of my former house were listed on my automobile policy?  I’d love to hear other ideas as well, but it was a Killer Algorithm that did it, as this is even beyond what a “human” would do.  BD

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