My pulse is far less private to me than my email or messages. Same with my medical history. I get that there would be situations where someone might want to hide certain conditions or histories, but for the average person, wouldn't having one's medical data leaked be a lot less harmful than having one's messages leaked?
In a more practical sense, it's not a big stretch to imagine a future where there are all kinds of insurance penalties associated with certain health conditions, plus the potential for hidden discrimination in multiple areas like job applications (maybe they did reject you because of your health condition, but how would you prove it?). I'm sure there are other potential problems.
> Maybe for yourself, you don't care about that, but I think most people consider this sort of thing deeply personal and private.
Part of the reason I asked. Why are your conversations less private and personal to you/others/this journalist than what is probably a mundane medical history or in this case, just a pulse?
The discrimination angle certainly makes sense though as a plausible fear.
Personally, short of deleting my account, I stay as far away from Facebook as I can, and try to minimise the amount of data I share with other services, although some compromises are still necessary or at least sufficiently convenient.
What's the cost?
To identify the costs, we’ll have to think about who might want to purchase this data and what they could do with it.
Ask yourself this: why would anyone be willing to pay for your heart rate?
No, I'm guessing it's worth a couple of cents ?
The Left 4 Dead director was trained on player emotions and designed to improve the game, which was a huge success.
Having access to it in the field has real applications.
Sleeping, walking, running and other fun stuff has a different heart rate profile, especially more so when time is taken into account (do you run for 3 minutes in the morning? maybe you’re late for a bus?).
This becomes even more concerning when it’s crossed with other data such as location, purchases, ad engagement... Very scary to be honest.
At any rate, getting an add that said "Always running late? Try Uber!" after running for a bus would be super creepy, I don't want any of that.
“We noticed your heart rate was only elevated for a couple of minutes in bed last night, need help lasting longer in bed?”
Or
“We noticed the same heart signature while you were away from your wife’s location, need a divorce lawyer?”
Data and what one can do with personal data is unknown unknown.
My observation is that "black mirror" type exploitation of private information is already happening.