Collections

Collections
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​Back in 2020 you had a small surgical procedure to relieve Carpal Tunnel Syndrome on your right hand.  Your insurance paid for the surgery and your 2 weeks of rehab, and you fully recovered, but you suddenly are receiving a bill from a collection agency that says you owe $675 to an anesthesiologist for services performed during the operation.  Since your insurance company was paying the bills directly to the billing hospital, you wonder why a collection agency is sending you a notice only to find out that for some reason the insurance company found that the anesthesiologist used the wrong code when filing the claim and the bill was never paid by the insurance company.  Since you signed a release before the operation, you are ultimately the responsible party and the monthly calls you get from the collection agency are becoming a major nuisance, despite your insistence that the insurance company is responsible for paying the bill.
That’s one kind of ‘collection’ that can become both an annoyance and a detriment to your mental and fiscal well-being, but there are innumerable ‘other’ types of collection agencies that know more about you than you do.  While we stare in horror at scenes of facial recognition systems in China identifying everyone crossing against the traffic lights in Beijing, we routinely allow detailed data collection every time we use social media.  But it goes further, as we habitually agree to ‘Terms of Service” that allows companies to not only monitor everything you do on-line, but to add to that database information collected by almost any company affiliated with that application, meaning any on-line company that uses the Facebook (FB) Pixel application to collect data and monitor their website traffic.
We did a bit of digging to actually try to understand at least some of the data that we give access to when we use social media, in this case Facebook, but we expect such terms and privacy policies are similar for Google (GOOG) and other on-line applications.  By agreeing to Facebook privacy policy you allow the company to collect information about any of the following:

• Information from your sign-up
• Any content you create
• Any content you share
• Any messages you send or receive
• Anything from the Facebook camera app, including being added to their facial recognition system, including people, places, accounts, tags, are groups you are connected with
• How you use content, including type of content, features used, actions, people, time, frequency of use, duration of use, including what posts, videos, content you view and any purchases or transactions you make including credit and debit card numbers, authentication information, billing and shipping addresses, and contracts you agree to
• Information that others provide about you, which can be from computers, phones, TV or other web devices
• Such external information can include device attributes, O/S, hardware & software versions, battery levels, signal strength, available storage, applications, file names, and mouse movements (!).  Information about your Wi-Fi , nearby Wi-Fi networks,  cell tower usage, mobile phone IP addresses is also included, although GPS, Camera, and Photo access can be limited if you choose the option
• Cookie data
• Information from partners that is collected by Facebook partners, even when off the Facebook application, including ‘likes’, ‘dislikes’, sites you visit, purchases you make and ads you see.

This barely scratches the surface of what you allow Facebook to collect about you, which makes those collection agency calls seem minor when you realize the huge profile of information you provide to social media companies.  Think of it as a file cabinet full of information about you that they have been accumulating since that time you first signed up, and we have not even begun to explore what they are allowed to do with the information that is collected, although there is a simple stipulation that says if the company is sold, all of that data goes to the new owners.  While the Google and Facebook algorithms use much of that data to offer you ads and suggestions that would lead to more data collection, they are not limited as to what the data can be used for, other than illegal purposes.  In fact much of the data is used for site analytics, but there is no limitation on the sale of such data or its use by affiliated companies. 
While this all might seem a paranoia fest, the US is particularly lax when it comes to personal information, especially when compared to the EU’s GPDR (General Data Protection Regulations) which force companies situated in or doing business in EU member countries to ask for more specific consent as to what they collect and what it is used for, with defaults limiting access to only basic information and operational cookies.  With all the data being collected, the potential for you information to be misused, hacked, or sold is enormous, which could lead to problems that are almost impossible to correct or even discover, and the Meta-verse, if or when it becomes a reality, will just give such collection agencies even more data to collect.  It was much harder to get purchaser information from brick and mortar retailers than it is to get it from on-line retailers.  Just think of how easy that data will be to collect when you wander through hundreds of Meta-verse ‘universes’ or outfit your personal universe with all of those things you can’t afford or could never own in the real world.