What bad things have happened to the average person based on grocery store purchase history?
Again, i'm not trying to be flippant with my questions I'm honestly just frustrated after decades of following privacy discussions that there isn't a clear answer to this question.
It's always some scary threat that could happen in the future. The problem is though that the powers that be (government/corporate) already have more private information than ever before and yet: nothing has happened.
At what point do these warnings just become crying wolf?
One other example is the 2016 election and cambridge analytica. Not going to make a political case on the politicians, but the political parties (and foreign govs with interest in the outcome) bought data on electors to try and persuade them to vote for one candidate or the other. Or to make them think issue X is bigger deal than they previously did. People don't like to lose autonomy in politics and data is good for targeting and persuasion.
Of course, the big what-if is also worrisome. Maybe not to you, but to many. Some people are more concerned than others. If your of one minority religion, then you might worry if that religion gets targeted will gov buy data to identify individuals (eg china and Uyghurs or trump and his proposed list of muslums). Maybe your gay in a nation that isn't friendly to that. Its very easy to tell if someone is queer from mass collected data. That could be a concern if the gov starts looking for people.
Another less scary but not great what-if: Many govs (including some us govs) are doing more "pro-active policing" where they try to prevent crimes, often with biased data. Right now its pretty targeted at going to minority neighborhoods, but maybe one day it'll target underage people who buy alcohol paraphernalia to see if they drink underage. Minor crime oft-committed, but probably easy to identify from only grocery store purchase data - especially if you combine that with camera data (walk in/out with someone who buys booze while they buy solo cups). While the under-age drinking is a silly example, it uses pretty easily available data. Think of all the minor crimes people knowingly commit that no one actually cares to enforce. Now imagine what we could do if a computer can just spit out a list of names.
There are so many ways the data can be (ab)used and people come up with more every day.
Which is wholly understandable because to price the risk accurately they need to see the full risk profile.
If insurers couldn't price accurately then insurance as a business couldn't exist.
Or they can totally stop pricing people reasonably at all. Insurance is predicated on sharing the risk. If "risky" people get priced out of driving (especially based on things they can't reasonably control!) then its probably bad for society.
This is even more true for medical insurance (although laws are probably stronger here). That said, i personally think the government (in us) should be handling medical costs on some level so maybe my opinion on controlling capitalism w/r/t medical insurance isn't the market-driven.