Ask The Markup
My Boss Wants Me to Use My Fingerprint to Clock In. Is That Legal?
You don’t always have to give your boss the finger
Maddy Varner
Investigative Data Journalist
Maddy Varner extracts datasets from public documents and databases to help build a more concrete understanding of how organizations use technology to predict and affect behavior—and the problems in those assumptions.
Before The Markup, she was a researcher at ProPublica, where she was on a team that won a Loeb Award for Beat Reporting in 2017 for “Monetizing Hate,” a series of stories that examined Facebook’s ad practices.
Show Your WorkAllstate’s Algorithm
How We Analyzed Allstate’s Car Insurance Algorithm
By parsing a rare document containing fine details of the company’s auto insurance pricing, we found stark differences in how high proposed price hikes were allowed to rise
Allstate’s Algorithm
Suckers List: How Allstate’s Secret Auto Insurance Algorithm Squeezes Big Spenders
Insurers are supposed to price based on risk, but Allstate’s algorithm put a thumb on the scale