Across the U.S., insurance companies are using aerial images of homes as a tool to ditch properties seen as higher risk.
Nearly every building in the country is being photographed, often without the owner’s knowledge. Companies are deploying drones, manned airplanes and high-altitude balloons to take images of properties. No place is shielded: The industry-funded Geospatial Insurance Consortium has an airplane imagery program it says covers 99% of the U.S. population.
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The array of photos is being sorted by computer models to spy out underwriting no-nos, such as damaged roof shingles, yard debris, overhanging tree branches and undeclared swimming pools or trampolines. The red-flagged images are providing insurers with ammunition for nonrenewal notices nationwide.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase across the country in reports from consumers who’ve been dropped by their insurers on the basis of an aerial image,” said Amy Bach, executive director of consumer group United Policyholders.
The increasingly sophisticated use of flyby photos comes as home insurers nationwide scramble to “derisk” their property portfolios, dropping less-than-perfect homes in an effort to recover from big underwriting losses.
Insurers say that customers agree to home inspections when they buy a policy and that photographing properties from the sky is less intrusive than the home visits used in the past. They say deploying fleets of surveillance planes lets them respond more quickly to disasters and charge rates that better reflect a property’s risk.
“If your roof is 20 years old and one hailstorm is going to take it off, you should pay more than somebody with a brand new roof,” Allstate CEO Tom Wilson said in an interview. He also said that the insurance giant is far along in using digital images to improve underwriting and that “there’s even more to come.”
Yeah but it's my private property. Give me a heads up you're going to fly over. I'm not even going to say "how dare they, they can't do that!", just give the property owner a heads up. It should...
Insurers say that customers agree to home inspections when they buy a policy and that photographing properties from the sky is less intrusive than the home visits used in the past.
Yeah but it's my private property. Give me a heads up you're going to fly over. I'm not even going to say "how dare they, they can't do that!", just give the property owner a heads up. It should be illegal to fly a drone over a neighborhood and capture images of properties without active consent. Is that too hard of an ask?
I disagree. Taking pictures of private property from public space should obviously be legal. That's what you're essentially doing with satellite imagery, high altitude balloons etc. There are laws...
I disagree.
Taking pictures of private property from public space should obviously be legal. That's what you're essentially doing with satellite imagery, high altitude balloons etc.
There are laws and regulations for flying drones at low altitudes legally. Those rules should obviously be followed, and updated where states haven't made updated regulations that take into account how pervasive drones are, and modern photography technology.
Beyond that principle, it seems silly to warn people ahead of time, so they can take measures to hide their insurance fraud.
Call it tribalism but I'm always going to side with my neighbors right to privacy over Allstate CEO Tom Wilson's profit margins. A physical home inspection requires them to dispatch a person to...
Call it tribalism but I'm always going to side with my neighbors right to privacy over Allstate CEO Tom Wilson's profit margins. A physical home inspection requires them to dispatch a person to your house, someone you can communicate with and, if need be, explain or disagree with. It creates a record of a direct person responsible for action taken by the company.
Even a "Hey, Jeff, our aerial photographer, is going to be in your neighborhood this week" email gives you some chain of custody. Avoiding my proclivity towards slippery slopes, I just want to know who is responsible for this reports, these actions, that influence the company to decide to drop you.
It's just another step they can sub contact to further avoid any responsibility towards their policy holders, in my opinion.
What if your kid wants to fly a cheap drone for fun? Or make a YouTube video including some aerial footage? Regulating one person's privacy will always require limiting another person's freedom....
What if your kid wants to fly a cheap drone for fun? Or make a YouTube video including some aerial footage? Regulating one person's privacy will always require limiting another person's freedom. Personally, I don't mind that anyone has the freedom to take photographs from the sidewalk or from a drone.
As long as their cheap drone is under FAA Part 107 weight limits and they keep it in VFR, they can go crazy. The second they bring a camera over my house for commercial purposes, we're gonna have...
As long as their cheap drone is under FAA Part 107 weight limits and they keep it in VFR, they can go crazy. The second they bring a camera over my house for commercial purposes, we're gonna have problems. If I want to make a YouTube video with aerial footage, I usually have permission from the owner of any space I'm over - because I've flown commercially before and just like waivers for release, I get a waiver for anyone's property I'm flying over.
Your neighbor having fun with a personal drone is perfectly fine. Setting up a business flying your cameras over houses to sell that information isn't cool with me.
At the end of the day, I'm sure all the insurance companies have some fine print that allows them to surgically insert you with a chip tracking your every move if they so choose but I disagree with them being allowed to make policy decisions from a satellite shot of property.
Are we really considering that these are VFR and/or FPV drones? If I were an insurance company I'd be using drones with nice cameras flying far above 400 ft AGL in FAA regulated air...
Are we really considering that these are VFR and/or FPV drones? If I were an insurance company I'd be using drones with nice cameras flying far above 400 ft AGL in FAA regulated air space...meaning I think pretty much anything reasonable goes as long as you file a flight plan and stay in contact with local air control?
That's great, and you should, but time after time, courts have ruled in favor of the First Amendment that there is no expectation of/right to privacy when something is visible from a public space....
Call it tribalism but I'm always going to side with my neighbors right to privacy over Allstate CEO Tom Wilson's profit margins.
That's great, and you should, but time after time, courts have ruled in favor of the First Amendment that there is no expectation of/right to privacy when something is visible from a public space. I agree that it's tricky...for example, it feels like I should be able to walk around naked as long as I have a fence that blocks anyone else's view into where I live...but there's likely no way to ban this without banning all aerial imagery, not that it's really any different than what every satellite imagery service provides, possibly with the exception of resolution.
Without these precedents, we also wouldn't be able to record the police.
Ok people keep bringing up satellite imagery as if it’s some gotcha and it’s really not. There are strict laws on what level of resolution you’re allowed to use and request, and these drones are...
Ok people keep bringing up satellite imagery as if it’s some gotcha and it’s really not. There are strict laws on what level of resolution you’re allowed to use and request, and these drones are 100% waaaay beyond that. Violating those restrictions is seen as a violation of privacy and punishable under the law.
Other settled examples that show people do expect some privacy have been around since people started putting cameras on their homes. There’s a hell of a lot of nuance to all of this that’s being ignored
How far beyond it are these drones? The article doesn't say what drones they're using and the illustration at the top of the article is pretty similar to the satellite limit (25 cm) and that comes...
How far beyond it are these drones? The article doesn't say what drones they're using and the illustration at the top of the article is pretty similar to the satellite limit (25 cm) and that comes from a commercial imagery company that I suspect the insurers may contract out.
What are the other settled examples you're talking about?
Can we compromise on something like not having companies weaponizing automated aerial surveillance technologies in order to further capitalize upon every single aspect of our lives? Can we have a...
Can we compromise on something like not having companies weaponizing automated aerial surveillance technologies in order to further capitalize upon every single aspect of our lives? Can we have a single thing that isn't spied upon, turned against us and seen as a means to an end goal of increased profits? Where does this eventually go? It's already dystopian as fuck and getting weirder and worse by the day. This is one example in a world's worth of examples. What happens when we've got aerial nudes stored up in just a random ass insurance database? Why the fuck does AllState get to photograph me sunbathing naked?
It just seems to me that "Taking pictures of private property from public space should obviously be legal" is a gross blanket statement that eliminates any vestige of even the concept of privacy we may have at this point.
This is so short sighted. If you don't want authoritarian nightmares or corporate hellscapes, you tend to assume your population has some expectation to privacy. Period. Not "well if you have...
This is so short sighted.
If you don't want authoritarian nightmares or corporate hellscapes, you tend to assume your population has some expectation to privacy. Period. Not "well if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't care". It is your property, viewing of that property, especially in detail, is supposed to be suspect to the property owners decision barring some sort of court getting involved.
Further, I'll bet you money no one with the power to get a good lawyer is getting these kinds of inspections, because they'd sue them into the dust, and be fully in the right to.
This is before you get into absurdly disturbing scenarios like employees using the information for malicious purposes (much like how all that tesla footage was being shared around the office), or straight up violating serious laws because you just recorded some 17 year old who was home alone and naked in the backyard for some reason.
It is because of that second point that there are very serious limitations on satellite imagery and high altitude balloons, and what you can request/when/how. Using it to literally stalk someone is not legal in the slightest, and neither is doing it with a drone.
Like speech, like personal property, right to weaponry and all the other rights, rights to privacy are necessarily limited. We have expectations of privacy in many areas. In other areas, we have...
Like speech, like personal property, right to weaponry and all the other rights, rights to privacy are necessarily limited.
We have expectations of privacy in many areas. In other areas, we have no such reasonable expectation. A number of actions we make are legally defined as doing something public, where there is no expectation of privacy.
Many property-related decisions are by definition public.
I'm happy that my local government updates public maps of buildings, roads and other items based on building applications. That lets me, a neighbor, know whether the guy across he road is building an illegal or potentially unsafe pool by the main road. And that I may want to report that to authorities as there is no permit.
Likewise, my local government uses satellite imagery to update new roads, buildings, areas that are deforested, where they have diverted a small stream etc. These matters become public record. Transforming the landscape is not a private act. That's why we have public registries, application processes etc. I cannot do whatever I want on my land. I am a part of society.
Now similarly, I'm fully in my right to view the neighbor's property in the resolutions on can take legally.
In my area, as long as I stand on a public road/property and have permits in order, don't fly within distance restrictions close buildings etc, to that resolution is however strong a camera I can mount on a drone of a legal size I can fly.
Further, this is not simply a case of "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care". Insurance premiums are based on collective, calculated average costs. If a bunch of people have issues covered by insurance, that they aim to hide from their insurer, my personal premiums go up as my insurer will necessarily assume that risks are higher than they should be.
It is in my personal interest that people pay their fair share on insurance. So my fully declared items get a lower premium.
This is not even true now. If you were to take current laws on security camera footage and apply it, you would be in violation if you were to suddenly construct a 100ft pole, on public property,...
Now similarly, I'm fully in my right to view the neighbor's property in the resolutions on can take legally.
This is not even true now. If you were to take current laws on security camera footage and apply it, you would be in violation if you were to suddenly construct a 100ft pole, on public property, to mount a camera on top of to see areas that are not visible from the street.
You also keep citing satellite imagery, but there's all sorts of laws on how detailed you can get and to what resolution before that's a violation of privacy.
As for "well i benefit from the corporation big brothering my neighbor because i'll have lower premiums", I suspect that will not be true in the long run, and arguably unnoticeable in the short run, even assuming good faith and them not just pocketing the difference.
That's not so obvious in the EU where rights to privacy would be balanced against any right to ... well, what right is being asserted here? Right to freedom of expression? See for example the...
Taking pictures of private property from public space should obviously be legal
That's not so obvious in the EU where rights to privacy would be balanced against any right to ... well, what right is being asserted here? Right to freedom of expression?
See for example the Naomi Campbell case. She was leaving a healthcare building, but was on a public pavement on a public street. She was photographed by a newspaper. She brought a case. She said she had a right to privacy, the newspaper said she was in public and had no expectation of privacy. She won.
See also laws like the UK's RIPA (which applies to some public organisations, but doesn't apply to insurance companies) -- this law was introduced because government employees were surveilling the public. For example, council employees would follow people home and take photographs of them entering their home to prove the person lived outside the catchment zone of a school. This is now unlawful because right to privacy is important.
To the contrary, in the EU this right is even more obvious than in the US. The right to freedom of expression includes the right to free access to information. This is a fundemental human right. I...
To the contrary, in the EU this right is even more obvious than in the US.
The right to freedom of expression includes the right to free access to information. This is a fundemental human right.
I have a right to gather information in public, with some limitations, but generally, as much as I want. You have no expectation of privacy when in public. Publication of content is a separate issue.
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights reads as follows:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
This is not more obvious in the EU than in the US. That's why there are so many issues with street view in the EU and why when a German military base is across the street from an American one,...
This is not more obvious in the EU than in the US. That's why there are so many issues with street view in the EU and why when a German military base is across the street from an American one, only the German base has a sign saying it's illegal to take a picture of the base. The EU favors privacy over expression much more than the US does.
Drones are mentioned in the article, but they also use airplanes. There are regulations on not flying too low, but you don’t need to ask permission to fly over someone’s house. I expect that...
Drones are mentioned in the article, but they also use airplanes. There are regulations on not flying too low, but you don’t need to ask permission to fly over someone’s house.
I mean, technically, yes. It increases the risk of an accident happening on your property. If I was insuring your TV and then come to find out you regularly play Wii Bowling with no strap, I'd...
I mean, technically, yes. It increases the risk of an accident happening on your property.
If I was insuring your TV and then come to find out you regularly play Wii Bowling with no strap, I'd probably charge you more since it's more likely something will happen.
I believe it’s often called out explicitly as something you have to declare because trampolines are dangerous. Whether people remember to do that when they get one is another question.
I believe it’s often called out explicitly as something you have to declare because trampolines are dangerous. Whether people remember to do that when they get one is another question.
Yes. Shop around for best rates and or talk to an empathetic responsible broker who will do that for you. :) doesn't hurt to ask about other things to declare Edit: do it soon-ish -- the article...
Yes.
Shop around for best rates and or talk to an empathetic responsible broker who will do that for you. :) doesn't hurt to ask about other things to declare
Edit: do it soon-ish -- the article says they're using photos as non renewals. Good thing it's not a cancellation because once you're cancelled by one firm it's crazy hard / expensive to get another because that's one of the first things new company asks. But even non renewal will mean you'll scramble a bit and have less time to shop better rates.
No, the argument (whether it's true or not) is that you get the rate that is appropriate to you because your premiums don't have to cover that idiot who didn't declare their trampoline and pool...
No, the argument (whether it's true or not) is that you get the rate that is appropriate to you because your premiums don't have to cover that idiot who didn't declare their trampoline and pool and then had a party where seven people broke 103 bones each after diving from the trampoline into the shallow end of the pool.
Time to start sunbathing in the buff in my back yard. I hope the neighbors don’t mind. :) I have mixed feelings about this one, the resolution required to determine the condition of my roof seems...
Time to start sunbathing in the buff in my back yard. I hope the neighbors don’t mind. :)
I have mixed feelings about this one, the resolution required to determine the condition of my roof seems a bit invasive.
I look it at how I imagine a lot of people looked at the notion of widespread photography back in the day. Suddenly, any Average Joe with a few bucks could take a snapshot of a person, their...
I look it at how I imagine a lot of people looked at the notion of widespread photography back in the day. Suddenly, any Average Joe with a few bucks could take a snapshot of a person, their house, their family, anything and everything that fits in frame. They could do whatever they want with that image more or less. People adapted to limit how much a person with a camera could see--building fences for privacy and not just keeping people and pets out, outdoor coverage via trees or canopies come to mind in the field of 'home defense.'
I don't like that the barrier to entry for aspiring voyeurs, corporate or otherwise has become lower with the advent of relatively cheap drones and ultra high resolution cameras attached to them--let alone satellite cameras. But I don't see a way we can regulate or restrict them without limiting access to the technology overall, and that's never really had any lasting success in the past. To some extent we'll have to adapt again, like people did to photographs, handheld video recording, and now easy access aerial footage.
So I gotta put a roof over my pool and trampoline, eh. Kidding, I can't afford any of those things. Heard from a buddy that's how construction and dam and mining safety is being checked on as...
So I gotta put a roof over my pool and trampoline, eh. Kidding, I can't afford any of those things.
Heard from a buddy that's how construction and dam and mining safety is being checked on as well, using satellite imagery.
I know someone who got one of these with State Farm. She had a ton of clean up to do around the yard before they would renew the policy. I think they gave her a month. Then she had to upload...
I know someone who got one of these with State Farm. She had a ton of clean up to do around the yard before they would renew the policy. I think they gave her a month. Then she had to upload videos and pictures to prove the work was done.
From the article (archive):
…
Yeah but it's my private property. Give me a heads up you're going to fly over. I'm not even going to say "how dare they, they can't do that!", just give the property owner a heads up. It should be illegal to fly a drone over a neighborhood and capture images of properties without active consent. Is that too hard of an ask?
I disagree.
Taking pictures of private property from public space should obviously be legal. That's what you're essentially doing with satellite imagery, high altitude balloons etc.
There are laws and regulations for flying drones at low altitudes legally. Those rules should obviously be followed, and updated where states haven't made updated regulations that take into account how pervasive drones are, and modern photography technology.
Beyond that principle, it seems silly to warn people ahead of time, so they can take measures to hide their insurance fraud.
Call it tribalism but I'm always going to side with my neighbors right to privacy over Allstate CEO Tom Wilson's profit margins. A physical home inspection requires them to dispatch a person to your house, someone you can communicate with and, if need be, explain or disagree with. It creates a record of a direct person responsible for action taken by the company.
Even a "Hey, Jeff, our aerial photographer, is going to be in your neighborhood this week" email gives you some chain of custody. Avoiding my proclivity towards slippery slopes, I just want to know who is responsible for this reports, these actions, that influence the company to decide to drop you.
It's just another step they can sub contact to further avoid any responsibility towards their policy holders, in my opinion.
What if your kid wants to fly a cheap drone for fun? Or make a YouTube video including some aerial footage? Regulating one person's privacy will always require limiting another person's freedom. Personally, I don't mind that anyone has the freedom to take photographs from the sidewalk or from a drone.
As long as their cheap drone is under FAA Part 107 weight limits and they keep it in VFR, they can go crazy. The second they bring a camera over my house for commercial purposes, we're gonna have problems. If I want to make a YouTube video with aerial footage, I usually have permission from the owner of any space I'm over - because I've flown commercially before and just like waivers for release, I get a waiver for anyone's property I'm flying over.
Your neighbor having fun with a personal drone is perfectly fine. Setting up a business flying your cameras over houses to sell that information isn't cool with me.
At the end of the day, I'm sure all the insurance companies have some fine print that allows them to surgically insert you with a chip tracking your every move if they so choose but I disagree with them being allowed to make policy decisions from a satellite shot of property.
Are we really considering that these are VFR and/or FPV drones? If I were an insurance company I'd be using drones with nice cameras flying far above 400 ft AGL in FAA regulated air space...meaning I think pretty much anything reasonable goes as long as you file a flight plan and stay in contact with local air control?
That's great, and you should, but time after time, courts have ruled in favor of the First Amendment that there is no expectation of/right to privacy when something is visible from a public space. I agree that it's tricky...for example, it feels like I should be able to walk around naked as long as I have a fence that blocks anyone else's view into where I live...but there's likely no way to ban this without banning all aerial imagery, not that it's really any different than what every satellite imagery service provides, possibly with the exception of resolution.
Without these precedents, we also wouldn't be able to record the police.
Ok people keep bringing up satellite imagery as if it’s some gotcha and it’s really not. There are strict laws on what level of resolution you’re allowed to use and request, and these drones are 100% waaaay beyond that. Violating those restrictions is seen as a violation of privacy and punishable under the law.
Other settled examples that show people do expect some privacy have been around since people started putting cameras on their homes. There’s a hell of a lot of nuance to all of this that’s being ignored
How far beyond it are these drones? The article doesn't say what drones they're using and the illustration at the top of the article is pretty similar to the satellite limit (25 cm) and that comes from a commercial imagery company that I suspect the insurers may contract out.
What are the other settled examples you're talking about?
Can we compromise on something like not having companies weaponizing automated aerial surveillance technologies in order to further capitalize upon every single aspect of our lives? Can we have a single thing that isn't spied upon, turned against us and seen as a means to an end goal of increased profits? Where does this eventually go? It's already dystopian as fuck and getting weirder and worse by the day. This is one example in a world's worth of examples. What happens when we've got aerial nudes stored up in just a random ass insurance database? Why the fuck does AllState get to photograph me sunbathing naked?
It just seems to me that "Taking pictures of private property from public space should obviously be legal" is a gross blanket statement that eliminates any vestige of even the concept of privacy we may have at this point.
This is so short sighted.
If you don't want authoritarian nightmares or corporate hellscapes, you tend to assume your population has some expectation to privacy. Period. Not "well if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't care". It is your property, viewing of that property, especially in detail, is supposed to be suspect to the property owners decision barring some sort of court getting involved.
Further, I'll bet you money no one with the power to get a good lawyer is getting these kinds of inspections, because they'd sue them into the dust, and be fully in the right to.
This is before you get into absurdly disturbing scenarios like employees using the information for malicious purposes (much like how all that tesla footage was being shared around the office), or straight up violating serious laws because you just recorded some 17 year old who was home alone and naked in the backyard for some reason.
It is because of that second point that there are very serious limitations on satellite imagery and high altitude balloons, and what you can request/when/how. Using it to literally stalk someone is not legal in the slightest, and neither is doing it with a drone.
Like speech, like personal property, right to weaponry and all the other rights, rights to privacy are necessarily limited.
We have expectations of privacy in many areas. In other areas, we have no such reasonable expectation. A number of actions we make are legally defined as doing something public, where there is no expectation of privacy.
Many property-related decisions are by definition public.
I'm happy that my local government updates public maps of buildings, roads and other items based on building applications. That lets me, a neighbor, know whether the guy across he road is building an illegal or potentially unsafe pool by the main road. And that I may want to report that to authorities as there is no permit.
Likewise, my local government uses satellite imagery to update new roads, buildings, areas that are deforested, where they have diverted a small stream etc. These matters become public record. Transforming the landscape is not a private act. That's why we have public registries, application processes etc. I cannot do whatever I want on my land. I am a part of society.
Now similarly, I'm fully in my right to view the neighbor's property in the resolutions on can take legally.
In my area, as long as I stand on a public road/property and have permits in order, don't fly within distance restrictions close buildings etc, to that resolution is however strong a camera I can mount on a drone of a legal size I can fly.
Further, this is not simply a case of "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care". Insurance premiums are based on collective, calculated average costs. If a bunch of people have issues covered by insurance, that they aim to hide from their insurer, my personal premiums go up as my insurer will necessarily assume that risks are higher than they should be.
It is in my personal interest that people pay their fair share on insurance. So my fully declared items get a lower premium.
This is not even true now. If you were to take current laws on security camera footage and apply it, you would be in violation if you were to suddenly construct a 100ft pole, on public property, to mount a camera on top of to see areas that are not visible from the street.
You also keep citing satellite imagery, but there's all sorts of laws on how detailed you can get and to what resolution before that's a violation of privacy.
As for "well i benefit from the corporation big brothering my neighbor because i'll have lower premiums", I suspect that will not be true in the long run, and arguably unnoticeable in the short run, even assuming good faith and them not just pocketing the difference.
That's not so obvious in the EU where rights to privacy would be balanced against any right to ... well, what right is being asserted here? Right to freedom of expression?
See for example the Naomi Campbell case. She was leaving a healthcare building, but was on a public pavement on a public street. She was photographed by a newspaper. She brought a case. She said she had a right to privacy, the newspaper said she was in public and had no expectation of privacy. She won.
See also laws like the UK's RIPA (which applies to some public organisations, but doesn't apply to insurance companies) -- this law was introduced because government employees were surveilling the public. For example, council employees would follow people home and take photographs of them entering their home to prove the person lived outside the catchment zone of a school. This is now unlawful because right to privacy is important.
To the contrary, in the EU this right is even more obvious than in the US.
The right to freedom of expression includes the right to free access to information. This is a fundemental human right.
I have a right to gather information in public, with some limitations, but generally, as much as I want. You have no expectation of privacy when in public. Publication of content is a separate issue.
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights reads as follows:
This is not more obvious in the EU than in the US. That's why there are so many issues with street view in the EU and why when a German military base is across the street from an American one, only the German base has a sign saying it's illegal to take a picture of the base. The EU favors privacy over expression much more than the US does.
Drones are mentioned in the article, but they also use airplanes. There are regulations on not flying too low, but you don’t need to ask permission to fly over someone’s house.
I expect that satellites will be used more, too.
Maybe this isnt the most intelligent response, but am I really supposed to declare my trampoline?
I mean, technically, yes. It increases the risk of an accident happening on your property.
If I was insuring your TV and then come to find out you regularly play Wii Bowling with no strap, I'd probably charge you more since it's more likely something will happen.
I believe it’s often called out explicitly as something you have to declare because trampolines are dangerous. Whether people remember to do that when they get one is another question.
It's always been on the list of special things you need to declare, along with swimming pools.
Yes.
Shop around for best rates and or talk to an empathetic responsible broker who will do that for you. :) doesn't hurt to ask about other things to declare
Edit: do it soon-ish -- the article says they're using photos as non renewals. Good thing it's not a cancellation because once you're cancelled by one firm it's crazy hard / expensive to get another because that's one of the first things new company asks. But even non renewal will mean you'll scramble a bit and have less time to shop better rates.
But so they give you a discount if you forgot to mention you replaced your roof? Somehow I doubt it.
No, the argument (whether it's true or not) is that you get the rate that is appropriate to you because your premiums don't have to cover that idiot who didn't declare their trampoline and pool and then had a party where seven people broke 103 bones each after diving from the trampoline into the shallow end of the pool.
Time to start sunbathing in the buff in my back yard. I hope the neighbors don’t mind. :)
I have mixed feelings about this one, the resolution required to determine the condition of my roof seems a bit invasive.
I look it at how I imagine a lot of people looked at the notion of widespread photography back in the day. Suddenly, any Average Joe with a few bucks could take a snapshot of a person, their house, their family, anything and everything that fits in frame. They could do whatever they want with that image more or less. People adapted to limit how much a person with a camera could see--building fences for privacy and not just keeping people and pets out, outdoor coverage via trees or canopies come to mind in the field of 'home defense.'
I don't like that the barrier to entry for aspiring voyeurs, corporate or otherwise has become lower with the advent of relatively cheap drones and ultra high resolution cameras attached to them--let alone satellite cameras. But I don't see a way we can regulate or restrict them without limiting access to the technology overall, and that's never really had any lasting success in the past. To some extent we'll have to adapt again, like people did to photographs, handheld video recording, and now easy access aerial footage.
So I gotta put a roof over my pool and trampoline, eh. Kidding, I can't afford any of those things.
Heard from a buddy that's how construction and dam and mining safety is being checked on as well, using satellite imagery.
I know someone who got one of these with State Farm. She had a ton of clean up to do around the yard before they would renew the policy. I think they gave her a month. Then she had to upload videos and pictures to prove the work was done.