Smartphone cradle used to cheat “10k steps/day” health insurance discounts

[forgueam]

I did something similar in college. A company paid cash for installing software that displayed ads on the bottom of your monitor. It qualified your ad viewing activity based on mouse movement.

At night I would open the software, wrap my mouse cord around an oscillating desk fan, then go to bed. Earned myself $50/month

[xythian]

That was my first ever exposure to programming. I installed as many of those crap ad bars as I could on a backup computer and wrote a macro that would open Internet Explorer, browse thru the same 10 sites in a loop, close IE, repeat.

This setup provided enough income to cover the costs of my dedicated phone line and ISP access.

[vanadium]

I remember the AllAdvantage.com cheat as well. It became so popular to game that one that not only were novel tactics like yours employed, but automatic mouse hijacking apps for Windows made some headway for those that didn't want to sit and click ads ad nauseum.

I may have made a quick buck on this back in the early 2000s.

[ransom1538]

Remember, you aren't ripping off the shady ad companies. Actually, you are doing what they want you to do. You are ripping off the merchants (people buying ads) who just don't know better.

[wpietri]

To my combined horror and joy, you can now just buy a commercial mouse jiggler: https://www.amazon.com/WiebeTech-Programmable-Mouse-Jiggler-...

[bennettfeely]

Do these companies still exist?

[johns]

I used this exact same method.

[Steltek]

I bike 15+ miles a day but my work's discount program doesn't "support" biking. If I was into vigilante justice, I'd consider a solution like this too. But as it is, I'm quite content biking for my own sake rather than some pittance of a benefit.

[Johnny555]

When my friend was in a corporate fitness challenge, he strapped the company-issued pedometer on his ankle to get credit for his biking. Not sure if he told the company that he did that, but his team won the competition.

[kevin_thibedeau]

They would prefer that healthy people don't get discounts since they are such low risks for claims. Better to incentivize the couch potatoes as a preventative health measure to reduce losses and have you subsidize the lifestyle of those who won't make an effort.

[beedogs]

Tape it to a paint can at Home Depot and have them mix it up in the machine. You get the discount and people will think you're some sort of marathon runner.

[glibgil]

Strap your phone to your ankle

[lostlogin]

Some sort incentivised exercise was offered at our local school. The winner was putting the fit bit on a kid each breakntime and getting excellent result. Strapping then on young children gets good numbers fast.

[Havoc]

You should be able to game that somehow in a legitimate way like Johnny says. Most types of oscillating movements should do

[liveoneggs]

are you more likely to sustain an injury than someone who is mostly idle?

[charleyma]

I've always found that anytime time a financial outcome is tied to some sort of behavior incentive, weird behaviors come out. This especially comes out in sales, where whether you like it or not, individuals will typically optimize for the best financial outcome, which is not always explicitly connected to what's best for the company.

[_jal]

Congrats, you've learned the Secret of Management.

From here on out, your career consists of optimizing methods of manipulating that effect for your benefit, the benefit of your team, and the benefit of your company, in that order.

[mjcl]

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

[fabianhjr]

There is also the Cobra effect as a subset of unexpected outcomes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

[clarkmoody]

EconTalk from three weeks ago was The Tyranny of Metrics[1] about how when metrics are tied to compensation, they often have disastrous consequences, even to the point of achieving the opposite of the desired effect.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2018/04/jerry_muller_on.htm...

[rocky1138]

Yes, this reminds me of the Cobra Effect from India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

[kpwags]

I wonder how many people use stuff like this to cheat the system? I remember seeing someone on reddit bragging about attaching their Fitbit to a reciprocating saw to get more steps than his wife.

I couldn't figure out why it was that important, but with insurance discounts, I can definitely see the financial incentives.

[emodendroket]

Wellness programs and similar initiatives are so repellent to me that I'm pretty sympathetic to everyone fooling them.

[dv_dt]

A fitbit wellness program similar to this is attributed to one of the ignition points of the West Virginia teachers strike. The gamification program was added in conjunction with a health insurance cost increase and in the context of already very low pay.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-west-virginia-teachers...

Our healthcare costs are insanely high, with the fundamental performance of the system the worst in the modern nations of the world, our life expectancy being the only one in the group actually dropping. Instead of addressing fundamental issues, our employer benefit systems are experimenting with behaviour modification via gamification programs like some sort of bizzare black mirror dystopia.

[gascan]

Turn it around- perhaps the low risk individuals find subsidizing the high risk individuals equally repellent. Wellness programs allow those individuals to recover some of their premiums.

[entee]

They don't even work:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/workplace...

[BrentOzar]

I've seen folks wrap their step tracker in a couple pairs of socks, then either throw it in the dryer, or tie the socks to a ceiling fan on low. Those particular folks called it "going jogging."

[otakucode]

What you measure - you optimize. They measured cellphone shaking. They got optimized cellphone shaking.

I will also share another famous quotation of mine which I intend to eventually get tattooed somewhere (when I can figure out how to make it look good.. I have no tattoos): "Make game of that which makes as much as thee." - from The Rubiyat by Omar Khayaam.

[walrus01]

similar but different, a manual labor app store rating farm:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zHQqznuFPd6EO1ryjV2Zlc6MSxY=...

[jonahhorowitz]

The obvious defect in this device is that it doesn't charge your phone while it walks it for you.

[49bc]

The Wells Fargo effect: if you optimize for a number, you’ll get that number.

[donttrack]

Next up: GPS cradles to proxy your driving habits into granddaddy mode to get cheap car insurance.

[camhenlin]

It seems like the additional miles added might defeat the purpose

[_s]

"Black Box" car insurance already exists :)

[saagarjha]

This would presumably work as long as your insurance provider doesn't have access to your location or any other means of figuring out that your exercise routine is odd.

[diiaann]

My uncle in China had a seat belt chime defeater that also doubled as a bottle opener.

[CosmicShadow]

Funny enough, my wife works at an insurance company that has "walking stations" where you can work while on a treadmill and the fitbit doesn't detect steps that way unless you remove it from your wrist and jam it in your belt or bra, which doesn't always work when the walk stations are not private.

[borntyping]

I'm sure I've something similar come up a few times recently, but never with any source discussing the health insurance plans that supposedly collect this data.

Has anyone come across anything on these insurance plans? I'm sure it's something many companies would love to do but I remain skeptical.

[dogruck]

It always makes me smile when I see the hoard of people proudly step forward, and boast, “oh yes, here are examples of how I’ve cheated various systems!!”

Which is fine. That’s human nature.

But. No shame.

[DonHopkins]

Herbie Hancock and Jim Whiting rocked it in 1984!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockit_(song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY

[dghughes]

I was using the Samsung Health app not for insurance just for personal reasons. I was doing well most days I waked a minimum of 10,000 steps or so I thought. So I opened up the app to find it was not working because it had updated and I had to agree to new terms first. :(

[intrasight]

These program will all be illegal at the end of the year anyway, so don't invest much in hacks.

[_jal]

I certainly hope so. Fuck that, the insurer chosen by my company doesn't get to be this intrusive with me. I simply do not trust them.

My current insurance hasn't tried this yet, but I'm sure they will. They're going to hate me by the time I get done redlining the agreement and sending it back, and that's just for starters.

We are going to see a ton of tertiary effects of all this data sloshing around, and I really don't think people are going to like them. Especially wrt insurance and invasive surveillance like this. To drive, the state requires it, and so any time-and-place data and so on will be effectively legally required to be shared under whatever terms insurance companies choose.

[avhon1]

Do you have a source on that? Also, what country?