Online age quiz is Big Pharm’s newest disguise
Have you ever noticed that online quiz that promise to tell you your “real age?”
It’s pretty much everywhere – even Oprah is talking about it. The quiz on this Web site features 150 very detailed questions about your lifestyle, habits and family history. Then, it calculates your “real” age based on your answers.
If you’re in poor health, you might be a few years older than what the calendar tells you. If you’re in great health, you might be younger.
But forget all that – because that’s not even close to what this site is really about. According to the New York Times, the RealAge test is little more than a front for Big Pharma.
Once you fill out that survey, those 150 answers are used to give drug makers a highly intimate peek into your lifestyle, health and habits. And unlike folks who take other surveys, the people who answer these questions can be counted on to be honest – after all, you won’t learn your “real” age if you leave anything out.
But now that the RealAge folks have all of your deepest health secrets, they can e-mail you Big Pharma marketing messages about meds you might need for everything from your blood pressure levels to sexual problems.
After all, you told them – however innocently – that you’re a candidate for these meds and more. Your own doctor may not have this level of detail on you.
It’s a marketing department’s dream… but a nightmare for those of us who still value our privacy, because only in the finest of all fine print is it even implied how your personal information will be used. Read it closely, and you’ll find wording that says “we will share your personal data with third parties to fulfill the services that you have asked us to provide to you.”
What that really means is this: RealAge is using the information from your survey to send highly targeted messages on behalf of Pfizer, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and more.
How targeted?
“If you want to reach males over 60 that are high blood pressure sufferers in northwest Buffalo with under $50,000 household income that also have a high risk of diabetes, you could,” Andy Mikulak, RealAge’s vice president for marketing, proudly told the Times.
Don’t feel bad if you fell for this – some 27 million people already have, and I’m sure that number will continue to grow.
So let this be a lesson: Don’t answer personal questions or provide personal information online, for any reason, unless you know exactly who’s getting the information and what they plan to do with it.
That goes for everything – not just your health.
Edward Martin writes House Calls, a daily letter chronicling the most cutting-edge alternative methods for beating diabetes and cancer, to the latest FDA foul-ups and Big Pharma conspiracies.
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0779lewis
I believe everyone who owns a computer needs to sign up to receive the FDA reports they publish on line every week. In that way you will find out what you need to write about so FDA will know the public is watching them. I have written a very informative and serious letter to Comm. M./ Hamburg,something that need addressing. NO RESPONSE For instance: I read where a cow had been rejected due to the fact it had some kind of drugs in it. So FDA wrote the owners a letter as a warning. Big deal , The person sending that animal for slaughter would have known the situation and should have been fined and never be allow to send anything for slaughter. How many have slipped through. Also when you see the dates on the milk, it should not be allowed. I bought a bottle of milk for cooking four days ago and the expiration date is l/10/, I wonder how long it rode around in the big tanker and how long it sat around. I grew up on a farm where my Dad bottled the milk from two farms and put this fresh milk on door steps and in stores.. The cows did not live under sheds and they ate what cows should eat and were not given drugs for more production.. They were also outside each day in the sun, unless it was winter time. The milk was bottled the day after production, next day's date was on the cap. If it was not sold it had to be picked up and new milk put on th shelves. That was a government idea and a bad one. ( I imagine all the Commercial big farms had that changed.) The fresh milk properly pasteurized from our farm will maintain the freshness for many days. In the winter the cows stayed in a big barn with fresh bedding, silage, hay plus Good feed. ( Never saw a mad or sick cow.) When they went out on pasture for the first time in the summer we would get calls from people who would tells us the milk was different, my Dad told them it was due to the first grass and within a week we were back to normal. He never lost a customer. It is a shame that the small farmer with the good fresh milk has been pushed out. It provided a great way of life for the family.
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