Startup offers landlords continuous, deep surveillance of tenants' social media

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/09/uk-startup-offers-landlords-co.html

by prawn • 10 years ago

69 60 10 years ago

walrus012• 10 years ago

That is really, really creepy. I will not pay money to or enter into any sort of business relationship with a real estate firm that wants to be on my Facebook 'friends' list.

fucking_tragedy• 10 years ago

One of the bots posing as an attractive woman that you added 4 years ago is already your friend.

walrus012• 10 years ago

As likely as that is for 98% of the population, everyone on my list is somebody I know face to face. And I don't put personal milestones/problems/drama on facebook. More like technology news posts about Keurig cup DRM systems, ipv4 exhaustion and old German cars. I'd love to see the inaccurate results of a profile created entirely based on that content.

etrautmann2• 10 years ago

So what can we collectively do to ensure that businesses like this fail, fail big, and fail publicly?

ccvannorman• 10 years ago

Knee-jerk answer: Not much, but we can start businesses whose sole goal is to bring 20th century style privacy to the populous. I'd pay $$$ for a monthly service that shields me from BS like this!

daviross• 10 years ago

Note who works for/with them and remember that if you're ever in a hiring position (or able to influence hiring)?

Since the people working to put this together clearly don't have the ethical sense to not-make this, at least they might think twice if there's enough understanding that producing flat-out evil might hurt their career prospects.

pjc504• 10 years ago

Campaign for meaningful tenant's rights?

maccard• 10 years ago

If you're in the uk, unfortunately you're at the mercy of the letting agents. It's already a racket and an incredibly invasive system, this is only slightly worse.

dfraser992• 10 years ago

It's a logical idea.... given today's world and the nature of society / capitalism at this point in time. I am writing an essay "On The Internet, You Should Pretend To Be A Dog". The same basic idea of strip mining a person's social media presence (along with whatever databases of information is handy) and machine learning the heck out of it to figure out sources of information or specific starting points for cracking your passwords (assuming you are one of the subset who base your password on personal information - how many non-IT people do that? - and don't bother paying attention to all the advice out there)

Really it's an essay about good password policies, e.g. for Grandma who thinks her cat's name spelled backwards is hard to guess... yet posts all over Facebook about Meowie.

Considering Mark Zuckerberg didn't bother to use LastPass or memorize a simple sort of random string of characters...

kristianc3• 10 years ago

Services like these are just the start. It's not going to be too long before background social media checks such as these get absorbed into your Experian credit report and become part of the general information a landlord or anyone else has on you. You won't even know about it or have any recourse if the algorithm gets it wrong.

China is already trialling a 'Social Credit' system that aims to achieve similar. The only difference between China and the West is that as an authoritarian state they can be more brazen about it.

Sadly, it being Britain, there will always be a fair share of people willing to go along with it because they 'probably know what they're doing' and the 'innocent have nothing to hide.'

x5n1• 10 years ago

don't use social media. problem solved. something called privacy, embrace it. privacy is a responsibility to keep your information private. it's not a right like many people are misled by those in power to believe.

kristianc3• 10 years ago

It's very hard to 'not use' social media. If someone makes a post about you, you're on social media whether you like it or not.

Most people would also say that foregoing the benefits of using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Wikipedia, Medium, TripAdvisor et al is an unreasonably large compromise for not having employers, landlords, business contacts, potential romantic interests not running machine psychoanalysis on your social accounts.

Houshalter5• 10 years ago

I'm sure this is an incredibly unpopular opinion here, but I really believe that these things can be a net good. At least in some cases, like your example of credit checking.

I recall a startup nonprofit that gave loans to people in third world countries. The main problem was detecting fraud, and the only tool they had was checking social media profiles. Clearly this is a good thing if it maximizes the number of people who get loans. Even if a few good people get accidentally filtered, there is a net benefit. And yet this was really controversial in the HN comments.

There is also a net benefit to having more accurate predictions on who will make a good tenant. Rent is the largest cost of living for the poor in many places, and anything that helps reduce that cost is a net benefit.

Yet people react based on emotions. If a single false positive out of millions causes someone to be worse off, it's considered unfair and bad. Even if the net utility is positive and more people benefit than are hurt. It also rests on some underlying assumption that the existing system is perfectly fair, which is obviously false. Human's are way more biased at judging than algorithms. Bad loans and bad tenants have to be paid for by everyone else, which is hardly fair either.

Social Credit has nothing to do with it. The goal of social credit is to discourage dissent. Whereas credit rating agencies don't care what your political opinions are, just how likely you are to pay your bills.

kristianc3• 10 years ago

There is also a net benefit to having more accurate predictions on who will make a good tenant.
Social Credit has nothing to do with it. The goal of social credit is to discourage dissent.

That's the law of unintended consequences though. A well-intentioned system designed to determine who is and isn't a good tenant ends up having a chilling effect on online conversation as a whole because people are worried their prospective landlord, business partner, romantic partner won't want to deal with a Tory / Labour voter / UKIP voter / Trump supporter delete as appropriate.

As Schneier points out in his book, it's the same technology used by Disneyland to match people's to their photos when they've been on Big Thunder Mountain as is used to pick out dissidents at political demos in Russia.

Inherent in cost-benefit calculations is a tendency to overestimate short term individual benefits and underestimate long term social harms.

a3_nm• 10 years ago

You are suggesting that a background check system is doing a net good if more people benefit than are hurt.

The problem is that a system like this would strongly encourage all people, good or bad, to avoid doing things that the system could object to. It's not enough to count the actual false positives, you have to take this loss of freedom into account as well. I don't think it's a good idea to have people self-censor because they worry how a surveillance algorithm will react to what they do. (The same way that you think twice, nowadays, about using problematic keywords or expressing a dangerously controversial opinion in a text message to a friend.)

blub• 10 years ago

I also remember a company that extended loans, but all ober the world. They were using analytics based on social media, browser fingerprinting, etc.

They had some cases where they had no idea why the algorithm rejected some loan applications and then analysed the logs to find out why. It turned out that there was a correlation between specific system fonts and defaulting ob loans.

Giving power over people to opaque algorithms and hustler start-ups is foolish.

pjc504• 10 years ago

Rent levels have very little to do with actual cost, it's a market-clearing price, only affected by the availability of alternatives.

And what happens to the people who are banned by the system? They don't cease to exist.

Rentiers used to overtly discriminate against people by ethnic group until this was banned, and undoubtedly still do to the extent that they can get away with it. If you algorithm disproportionately rejects members of ethnic minorities, is that even legal?

cageface• 10 years ago

This is one more reason why I no longer post on social media.

visarga6• 10 years ago

How long until colleges start making similar social network background checks to decide who to admit or reject?

etrautmann2• 10 years ago

This is exactly the dystopia we're willfully pushing ourselves towards. What a nightmare

visarga6• 10 years ago

This application is trivial compared to what NSA probably does. They surely have us all profiled, they know our interests and friends. It's very dangerous if they decide to impact on undesirables. These logs could even be used in the future based on the interests of those in power. Not even Eastern Europe in the height of Communism was able to have such detailed, deeply insightful information on every person.

meeper16• 10 years ago

This is exactly why facebook will fail.

brezelgoring• 10 years ago

I doubt so, big ones such as facebook or google can dedicate themselves to be big umbrella after their main products lose direction/public/profit/all-of-the-above. Anyhow, as much as I'd love to see social media die out I am sure it will never happen

loxs• 10 years ago

Yeah, maybe Facebook won't fail as a company, or at least not soon. But I can get OP's argument. I can see it stop being a cool thing people use to connect to their friends. Once a viable alternative is available.

iofj• 10 years ago

They can have that. I have thousands of friends, and essentially zero information on Facebook, good luck even filtering out my real friends from the Farmville and Mafia Wars (never seriously played, those games are in there exactly because they obfuscate real acquintances).

I've also got real social media accounts that I actually use and that are under a fake name and I regularly verify that obvious google searches don't find them.

You can use google alerts to automate this.

vintermann2• 10 years ago

For all you know, they penalize people for not being oversharers.

visarga6• 10 years ago

friends from the Farmville and Mafia Wars

Or they find some objectionable friend in his list, by random chance.

liw• 10 years ago

If landlords and letting agents and real-estate agents do this, should not tenants do it too? Could we have a service where a tenant gets a "creepiness report" on a potential landlord/agent?

Actually, probably better not. Escalating mutual destruction scenarios are not a useful long-term strategy.

jkot2• 10 years ago

making tenancy unbearably awful has the additional benefit of encouraging people to do everything -- anything -- to become home-owners

There is other option: leave. Prague and other cities have many foreigners from UK.

ddebernardy2• 10 years ago

And it's quite unfortunate for them that the UK might vote for a Brexit, without them necessarily being able to chime in. We recently met UK retirees in Spain who were deeply worried. They had not lived in the UK for over 15 years so weren't eligible to vote for or against. And yet their life situation was directly affected by the outcome: If the Brexit occurred, they'd end up unable to afford local healthcare, and would end up needing to return back north.

jkot2• 10 years ago

I dont even get why UK wants out. UK is not part of Shengen and has its own currency. There is no reason for exiting, UK already has what it wants.

dazc3• 10 years ago

"If the Brexit occurred, they'd end up unable to afford local healthcare, and would end up needing to return back north."

There is already a reciprocal agreement for healthcare and no reason to suppose it would end. Don't forget there are many Spanish people living and working in the UK right now.

jdimov10• 10 years ago

Dear HN Monkeys,

You're cracking me up. You can not be pro-technology and pro-privacy at the same time - these things are mutually exclusive almost by definition. Pick a side already and stop whining. (Aaand here's a tip: the winning side in this will always be technology. Yes, that very same technology that you help create on a daily basis. )

codeisawesome3• 10 years ago

I want to try raising a HN admin flag on you - but your voice needs to be heard, you are obviously writing what you believe is right. There are likely many others just like yourself.

First, the obvious; Public Key Cryptography, HTTPs, Digital Encryption Algorithms and their implementations are all TECHNOLOGY and there is a non-trivial number of us HN Monkeys involved in building them as well (I wish I was one, not just yet).

Next. I get your concern. I really do, and I share it. The problem you're referring to is often incorrectly attributed to the proliferation of technology alone - but I think it's a problem of the free market. It's a problem of the commoditisation of Human Attention and Human Data in the quest for ever higher, ever better profits. This is not a new problem, rapacious and horrible entities have been born out of this. My blood boils when I see ads for fertiliser from DuPont on Indian TV. Yes, they're now advertising again as if Bhopal never happened. But hey, profits.

So your anger is misdirected. Please use it as fuel instead to try and build an alternate system. To try and think of ways in which the innate, inescapable human need for increasing individual rewards (today these rewards are expressed in the currencies of Money and Political Power), without compromising the needs of - well - everyone else. We need more thinkers and thinking. It's what humans do BEST.

ionised• 10 years ago

You're cracking me up. You can not be pro-technology and pro-privacy at the same time - these things are mutually exclusive almost by definition.

Hoooooooorse shit.

DoubleGlazing2• 10 years ago

For my current job (banking software development) I had to undergo a background check. In addition to the usual work and address history stuff I was also asked for all my social media account details, to which I answered "N/A". I don't want to lie and said I had none, instead I just went with N/A as I felt my social media presence was not applicable to the background check. I have a lot of personal info and pictures of my children on my facebook profile and that is no ones business but for me and my family.

The background check company got back to me with a list of social media account handles they had found, some were mind, some weren't. They told me that they would be submitting this list to my employer stating that I lied about my social media accounts. I responded by telling them that if they did they would be submitting incorrect information about me and I could take action using the Data Protection Act.

I expected to fail the check, but somehow I passed and got the job.

The takeaway from this is that so long as you refuse to discuss your social media accounts and don't use your real picture as a profile picture, don't have a really unusual name and keep everything locked down and private then how can they prove otherwise?

codeisawesome3• 10 years ago

They can't prove, but they Know. They also often Think they Know, and this will cause unexpected (from your perspective) repercussions.

DoubleGlazing2• 10 years ago

But what this company is doing is inherently dangerous for itself. The UK Data Protection Act is pretty darn strict about personal data and the Information Commissioner can and frequently does levy hefty fines for mistakes and breaches.

So lets just say I tell them that I have no social media presence and they dig up some accounts and tell the landlord I lied. Well, they have to justify their claim, they have to be able to conclusively prove it is mine. If they get anything wrong then all it takes is a complaint to the Information Commissioner stating this company is holding, processing and passing on inaccurate data about me to give them a little shock. A few too many complains would then probably trigger a severe audit by the commissioner.

Looking at it from a wider perspective. How are they processing and protecting information in general. How do they protect all the data they harvest from your social accounts? Are staff able to share the info for fun? is there access logging? How secure are their PCs? What do they do with your data after your tenancy ends? This is the sort of stuff a business like this cant afford to make mistakes with. If they do and people complain in big enough numbers it could negatively impact their business.

It's also worth noting that where religion, sexuality or health data is involved things get a little bit more serious as regards the DPA.

If I were dealing this company I would be quite happy to act in manner which would let them dig their own grave even if it impacted me.

codeisawesome3• 10 years ago

A Decentralised Web is quickly becoming one of Humanity's most urgent needs.

kerrsclyde• 10 years ago

I wonder what approach Facebook will take to services such as this?

It could be a huge source of revenue for them, or they could decide this would damaged confidence in their service and discourage (my instinct says the latter).

Startup offers landlords continuous, deep surveillance of tenants' social media

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