Facebook’s 10-year challenge could affect health insurance

A cute way to see whether or how you’ve aged in 10 years could influence insurance premiums later on, a technology consultant told NPR on Sunday.

Kate O’Neill warned that data-mining from the “10-year Challenge,” a side-by-side picture display of before and after images that is fast spreading on social media, could be used by companies like Facebook Inc. or Amazon.com Inc. to train facial recognition algorithms, which could determine your insurance risk later on.

Possible age progression recognition technology would be used in health care and health insurance assessments, Ms. O’Neill warned.

“For example, if you seem to be aging faster than your cohorts, perhaps you're not a very good insurance risk. You may pay more or be denied coverage,” Ms. O’Neill wrote in an article in Wired magazine.