
Startup will help landlords and employers mine intimate data from Facebook - walterbell
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/09/creepy-startup-will-help-landlords-employers-and-online-dates-strip-mine-intimate-data-from-your-facebook-page/
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tinbucket
_“If you’re living a normal life,” Thornhill_ [the start-up's co-founder]
_reassures me, “then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about.”_

That's a truly horrible justification of an invasive, creepy service. Who
defines 'normal'? What's the scoring criteria?

I've got a mortgage on my flat, but if I were renting, I wouldn't rent any
landlord using this start-up. Being sent this request by them would instantly
signal to me that they're not the kind of landlord from whom any sane,
reasonable person should rent if they have any other choice.

I sincerely hope this start-up fails and that Thornhill and his other co-
founder/s come to realise that their idea is deeply invasive and shits all
over a large part of society who are less fortunate than they.

~~~
stepanhruda
Did he seriously use that argument? Who decides what's a normal life?

> First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
> not a Socialist.

> Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I
> was not a Trade Unionist.

> Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a
> Jew.

> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

~~~
wrsh07
As long as you're identical to the CEO, you're normal

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groaner
Who wants to work with me on my next startup, which sets up an innocuous-
looking Facebook profile for privacy-conscious individuals, including
friendships with other perfectly normal people and records of totally
commonplace, unobjectionable activities? We can make sure that you'll never be
rejected by a landlord, AirBnB host, or insurance company because of your
online presence.

All for a low, low price of $9.99/month!

~~~
randycupertino
I used to work as a nurse, and certain bay area hospitals would want access to
our facebook profile log ins and passwords as part of the hiring background
check and our 1-year review.

How everybody got around this was to set up an innocuous, benign facebook
dummy account with our real name, no posts excite liking the SF giants and
talking about the Warriors games. Then we would all make our "real" facebooks
with the wild stuff using our middle names instead of the last name. HR was
none the wiser.

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icehawk219
_“People will give up their privacy to get something they want,” he said._

And there in lies the problem I have with this. The sad thing is that a large
percentage of people would give up their privacy because the old "if you have
nothing to hide then what are you worried about?" is still sadly a common
mindset.

I would expect there to be a greater push from Facebook, Twitter, etc to crack
down on companies trying to do this though. Because at the end of the day the
way to avoid this surveillance is to not use their services.

~~~
breischl
Why would they crack down on this? It's not much different than what those
companies are already doing - it's just that they strip-mine your data and
sell it to advertisers instead of landlords.

If anything, I would expect them to buy that startup, or build a competing
product, rather than just shutting it down entirely.

~~~
niftich
But that's the point, isn't it? It's fair game if FB does it to their own
data, but if they're being scraped by a company that makes the news, they
might decide to revoke their API keys or otherwise use technical or legal ways
to limit their access.

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jedberg
Wow they found a perfect trojan horse for this business. They found a
situation where you'd be likely to grant them permission -- wanting to rent a
house, where you'll usually give over your SSN for a credit report and
background check.

And then once they have your permission, you'll _probably_ forget about it.

So once they go to release their dating app, if they have enough people, they
don't need your permission because the probably already have access to your
profile through your friends who might have rented an apartment.

And this kids is why even if _you 're_ secure, you need _all_ your friends to
be _just as secure_.

~~~
DanBC
Well, they're in the UK so no, the permission they get to trawl your data to
sell to landlords doesn't transfer into permission to use your data for online
data.

EDIT: from 2018 the fine could be 4% of global turnover, which feels
significant.

[https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-
bl...](https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-
blogs/2016/06/consumers-taking-action-over-mistrust-of-organisations-handling-
personal-data/)

~~~
sgt101
Well - also, if it's a legal judgement against you, you have to stop doing
what you have been doing, no arguments, no equivocation. Tough if that's your
business!

~~~
DanBC
Sadly, it's just your business that has to stop. You can just start another
business.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/18/watchdog-
demands-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/18/watchdog-demands-more-
powers-to-stop-cold-calling-kingpins-from/)

------
pmx
Any land lord asking me to let them do this would be blacklisted as far as I'm
concerned. Using a service like this raises huge red flags as to what type of
person they are and what it would be like to live with them as my landlord.

~~~
dredmorbius
Unless this is made manifestly illegal, and carries significant penalties,
both criminal and civil, it's not likely to change.

------
nommm-nommm
Its not clear if the service (based in the UK) will be available in the US or
not but:

"Meanwhile, unlike credit reports — which you may, under federal law, request
every 12 months — Tenant Assured doesn’t give users any way to view their
ratings or dispute misleading data."

Well, if they make this service available in the US they would most likely be
considered a CRA (Consumer Reporting Agency) and be subject to the Fair Credit
Reporting Act which requires all those things.

I also take issue with "going out on the weekends" being considered a negative
in general. I go out most weekends but we both make so much money we can more
than afford it. I don't think an algorithm can determine irresponsible
spending from responsible spending just from Facebook, your bank account
balance tells you more than your Facebook posts, which can be misleading.

And you guys who are saying "oh, I'd never rent from a landlord who uses this
service," you may not have a choice. If 99.99 - 100% of landlords use this
service you don't get a choice. This is where laws come in. You aren't going
to be able to negotiate with a landlord either because if they deviate from
their standard tenant policy than it can look like housing discrimination.

~~~
DanBC
> I also take issue with "going out on the weekends" being considered a
> negative in general

...and in the image they use the phrase "staying in" as a sign of financial
stress.

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djb_hackernews
I think this idea is bad but it works both ways sorta.

I was recently looking for an apartment and found one in liked . After
contacting the landlord I Googled his name and found his facebook. Scrolling
through his history I saw a post from 2 years ago commenting that he just
"found a sucker" to rent out the apartment. I thought it was pretty tasteless
at best.

~~~
randycupertino
Another good practice is to always put your landlords name into online civil
court databases for your and neighboring counties. See how many times they
have sued tenants and been sued by tenants. The results will probably surprise
you, it's quite often!

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hanklazard
>Among the behaviors that count against your Tenant Assured “credit”
percentage — i.e., how confident the company is that you’ll pay rent — are
“online retail social logins and frequency of social logins used for leisure
activities.”

Are we to believe that this company has actually done proper analysis to make
these kinds of correlations? If not, what sort of legal liabilities exist for
trying to make these sorts of predictions based on speculation / assumption?
This seems like something that consumers should be protected against, but I
assume that the company at least thinks it can hide behind the (implicit or
explicit) consent that potential tenants provide by signing up voluntarily.

------
samfisher83
From a legal perspective can't they be liable for helping employers and
landlords break federal law? Since we have EEOC, Fair Housing Act, etc.?

~~~
AJ007
In part it depends how they advertise the service. I've seen issues with both
an apartment rental site and a credit report/background check company. It is
one of those things where the company pays a small(ish) fine, but if they ever
do it again they will be in really big trouble.

Being very imprecise with this comment, but yeah, I think you are right. At
the least the employers or landlords are breaking the law if they are using
data or requirements which unnecessarily bias their selection based on
ethnicity or gender.

------
x0x0

       a list of every time I’ve tweeted the words “loan” and “pregnant,”
    

At least in the US, discriminating against families or pregnant women in
housing is illegal.

I help manage an apartment building. We prefer not to even know if applicants
have kids so we can't be accused of anything if we turn them down. Though the
applicant ranking process is essentially dump every applicant with bad credit,
then sort by income decreasing.

Also, in the image, you see the word "loan" and "loans" show up. I'd put money
on their 'NLP' really being grep, because it looks like they aren't even
stemming. ie even mentioning the word loan will show up there, regardless of
context. Or borrow, as in I borrowed a book from the library.

------
mgkimsal
and if i don't have social media accts? or the 'right' ones, anyway? no
apartment for me?

~~~
ape4
Make some dummy accounts. Seems like everyone is going to need to do that.

~~~
VLM
Everyone's going to need a startup monthly service to manage those
sockpuppets. "Famous people" and corporations already hire identity
consultants, why shouldn't middle and lower class people have carefully
managed sock puppets?

~~~
ape4
Filled with tons of boring photos of family picnics, graduations. All with the
right number of upvotes and comments like "Congrats" from other sock puppets.

~~~
randycupertino
That's actually a good startup idea- online identity management.

~~~
ape4
You can select your fake profile from "family man", "student", "crafter
housewife", ...

------
DanBC
Be interesting to see if this is accepted by the Information Commissioner.

The new information commissioner will be Elizabeth Denham, so it'll be
fascinating to see what she thinks.

EDIT: I can't seem to find their ICO registration. I can find one registration
for Steve Thornhill, for a "Sonic Finance". I have no idea if it's the same
person.

[https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z1586532](https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z1586532)

------
jkelsey
> “People will give up their privacy to get something they want,” [Thornhill]
> said.

Housing isn't a want, it's a need. What a disgusting perspective.

------
stepanhruda
Sounds like EU should shut this down pretty fast.

~~~
cinquemb
I'm assuming you are not in the brexit camp ;)

~~~
ben_jones
Even if he was wouldn't the EU banning an application have damning consequence
to a company in Britain? Surely they want customers from all over the EU.

~~~
cinquemb
If they grow to become large, they can use their power of people making stupid
decisions (or not necessarily in their best self interest) along with the
wealth from landlords to sway markets that they may not be legally based in to
their favor. You'd have to make it illegal for landlords in whatever market to
go against doing something like this, and for people to not give their data
away willingly.

Facebook might shut them down from C&D if they grow bigger than comfort, but
its still technically possible to get the data if you are willing to not
submit to/reside in the legal jurisdiction. I know of financial services
companies in the US that make loans to foreign students based on non-fico
data, this is growing market and people want people servicing their
loans/contract terms and are willing to pay for signals that help secure their
profit margins.

But hey, don't let me stop people for putting up their own resources to play
this game of wack-a-mole, esp if you are more interested technical means of
subversion :P

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rusabd
Is there service which shows which companies use such Facebook data? I would
pay for that

------
ape4
Well that's horrible.

