In the midst of this public scrutiny against companies like Facebook and Google, you may wonder why you should be concerned about your privacy. The latest article from the International Monetary Fund might give you some idea.
Four IMF researchers examined the current relationship between finance and technology, as well as the foreseeable future in that regard, mentioning the possibility of using data such as search, browsing and purchase history to more accurately calculate a person’s credit rating or company; that is, your score to receive credit. The researchers argue that this approach could result in larger loans to borrowers who are turned down by traditional financial institutions.
“Banks tend to cushion the terms of a loan for their long-term clients during recessions” because they already have a history and a relationship with the client, the authors of the article write. Now, imagine the history that Facebook has of its users and, suddenly, their plans to launch their own virtual currency and money transfers on WhatsApp make sense.
This goes beyond fucking you for your consumer tendencies. What the IMF is really trying to do is save the institutional banking system from the threat of Facebook, Google, Apple, and all the companies that own a huge amount of big data that have somehow gotten into your finances. Tech companies have greater access to your virtual information, and messaging platforms like WhatsApp can replace the physical locations where banks traditionally meet with their customers.
Even in the business lending game, which banks continue to dominate, things could change “due to the rise of cloud computing, which could allow large technology companies to create B2B ecosystems that include large corporate clients.”.
“The type of browser and hardware used to access the Internet, the history of searches and online purchases” could be incorporated by machine learning into the credit score assessment, the researchers say, without specifying how those algorithms would work.
The authors acknowledge that incorporating this type of data into credit analysis would raise privacy concerns, and would require large tech multinationals to loosen their ditto standards, but they trust that a more intimate relationship between lender and borrower will allow banks to loosen. more money in times when people need it.