Take charge of your risk profile: Watch smartphone battery life

Those with insurance company apps on their smartphones and who often forget to charge their phones might want to set a reminder — on an app, of course — to do so.

According to a cyber expert, insurers are using battery life as a way to gauge whether an insured is organizer or not. Low-to-no battery life from time to time means the insured is disorganized and thus higher risk, reported a columnist in the Dallas Morning News on Thursday.

“Depleted battery equals a high-risk consumer? High risk equals higher premiums. Data collected on us affects our insurance premiums and our credit scores, and we don't even know it,” wrote columnist Dave Lieber, reporting on legislative hearings on the matter of privacy and cyber concerns, calling for legislation that protects consumers from such intrusions.

“These kinds of privacy abuses are exactly why we need a new Texas data privacy law,” he wrote. “There are few rules and some companies take advantage of that.”