Sneaky iPhone accessory gains users a health insurance discount

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Hill running will make you a better runner
The old-fashioned way to show how fit you are.
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

The moment smartphones gained the ability to track the number of steps people took every day, insurance companies were ready to find ways to use that data to offer people cheaper premiums.

The moment that happened, enterprising (and slightly underhanded) entrepreneurs were ready to give lazy people a workaround to make it look like they were walking much further than they really were.

What kind of workaround, you ask? Well, something along the lines of this:

“Chinese phone cradle for boosting your phone’s daily step count,” China tech writer Matthew Brennan wrote on Twitter. “Some insurance companies in China allow people who consistently reach a certain daily step count to get discounted health insurance premiums.”

There’s no more information about the cradle in question. However, it seems highly likely that devices like this will become more popular as more and more insurance companies make these kinds of offer.

Unless Apple can find some way of improving their algorithms to spot fake movements like this, of course. Or unless devices like this become so popular that such offers simply aren’t feasible.

2019’s version of the self stick, anyone?

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