14 DAY TRIAL // Gone are the days when you could get a life insurance policy and get on with your life.
Now, John Hancock, one of the most important life insurers in the US will only sell you a life insurance policy if you agree to let it track you all day long using activity tracking devices such as the Apple Watch, an iPhone, or the Fitbit.
As reported by Reuters, John Hancock, a 156-year old life insurance company from the US, now only allows you to sign so-called interactive policies, designed to enable the insurance company to keep a close watch on your day to day health status.
Interactive life insurance policies are not something new for John Hancock seeing that the first time they brought this insurance product to the market was in 2015.
However, this is the first time the life insurer has decided to only sell this type of life insurance policy from now on.
The life insurance company says that it will accept as activity tracking devices Apple Watches, Fitbits, or iPhones, all of them known to have built-in health stats monitoring software.
Privacy advocates question the insurer's intentions behind the decision to monitor their customers' daily activity
More importantly, although the rules were just enacted, old policies will also be updated to follow the new requirements from next year.
Furthermore, although it sounds like a privacy nightmare, interactive life insurance policies are well-known in Britain and South Africa, and they have also have been gaining ground in the United States.
"Policyholders score premium discounts for hitting exercise targets tracked on wearable devices such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch and get gift cards for retail stores and other perks by logging their workouts and healthy food purchases in an app," reports Reuters.
Although this might look like a dream come true for people who cannot stick to a healthy schedule, privacy backers have stated their concern since the very first time such an insurance policy has been sold.
According to them, life insurers will most probably use the data they collect to make sure that they sign only the most profitable clients, while also making sure that everyone else's charges will go through the roof.