vaspider:

runningfromomelas:

journalismfucked1000years:

Score Assured, as the umbrella company, will offer a suite of services to those desiring a more personal insight into applicants’ lives across a number of different sectors. Tenant Assured, for instance — marketed to landlords — is already up and running. The next program to go live, Recruit Assured, will target employers.

“We’re trying to bring back a level of personal relationship to the digital world so the right judgement can be made for the right reason,” Score Assured co-founder Steve Thornhill told The Verge.

Holy shit you fucking scumbag.

For proprietors enrolled in Tenant Assured, for instance, would-be renters are required — assuming they first consent — to hand unfettered social media access over to potential landlords in the name of transparency with regard to economic status.

The program then dissects applicants’ online social media activity — including conversation threads and even private messaging — using language processing software and other analytics.

The frequency of keywords like “poor” and “staying in” and “no money” in online posts is noted, after which the Tenant Assured program sends landlords a “financial stress level” report — a purported measure of how likely would-be tenants will be able to pay their rent.

But clearly, given the mass data-mining methods of the program — and the varied and subjective contexts in which individuals use words and phrases — landlords will get a far more incisive peak into an applicant’s personal life. One that goes well beyond financial health.

As reported by Tara Evans of the Telegraph, among the other data points on the final report sent to landlords is one that “aims to give insights into five main personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.”

On that front — and perhaps as a reflection upon the Score Assured concept in general — founder Steve Thornhill gave an almost startlingly flippant response to the Washington Post:

        If you’re living a normal life then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about.

For those who’ve been paying attention, Thornhill’s statement should sound eerily similar to that of lawmakers and officials in numerous countries when trying to defend mass surveillance programs.

Holy FUCK

Just in case you found housing discrimination too complicated or tedious, now there’s an app for that!

Uhhh

I stay in because I’m disabled.
I talk about people’s “poor judgment” because I avoid ableist phrases like “stupid.”
I focus on spending “no money” on outings with friends because that’s financially healthier.

So not only is this intrusive and creepy and really wrong, it’s… not even going to be accurate.

How this can even be legal, I don’t know.

Holy shit, I’m glad I own my house, no matter if it’s a money pit.