GM’s OnStar is not only collecting detailed data about your driving habits, but is sharing them with data brokers who feed insurance companies’ risk ratings for your insurance policies
'Automakers and data brokers that have partnered to collect detailed driving data from millions of Americans say they have drivers’ permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read.
Especially troubling is that some drivers with vehicles made by GM say they were tracked even when they did not turn on the feature — called OnStar Smart Driver — and that their insurance rates went up as a result.’
In response to questions from The New York Times, GM confirmed that it shares “select insights” about hard braking, hard accelerating, speeding over 80 mph and drive time of Smart Driver enrollees with LexisNexis and another data broker that works with the insurance industry called Verisk.’
GM is called out, yes, but this is happening throughout the industry, We have two new Hyudai’s and they come with complementary “Blue Star” service. What is that? Well, it’s kind of unclear; it allows software updates, map updates, emergency calls, even a car-based wi-if hot spot, but there’s lots of fine print and though the article below says “you have to opt in”, I’ll bet I have and don’t even know it.
You know who else has these systems in place now? Suburu. Acura. Honda. Kia. Mitsubishi. Coming soon: Ford and Chrysler. Yes, they’ve found a way to the holy grail: subscription revenue! But not from you directly, you’ll just pay for it with higher insurance premiums.
I got a mileage service on my 2019 RAV4, last Monday, 11 March.
A couple days later, I noticed a new “message” on the dash that advised me that I’d been a good driver, except for one “thing”.
I was “good” for driving slow and braking, for example.
I don’t remember the “thing” that Toyota didn’t like about my driving.
All messages were in bright green color. I assume if it was serious, it would be in red?
Nobody at the Toyota service center told me about this new bug.
I assume this is data that is “sold”.
I renewed my auto insurance a month ago. It’s gone up 40%. I asked some questions about why… And got boiler plate responses - the rep had obviously been coached.
