Tracking of your driving habits...

I don't see a thread started on the NYT article about GM selling telematics info to LexisNexis which is then being sold to insurance companies.  From the article:

Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report" ... 

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors — the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score “for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage,” according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month.

https://archive.is/2024.03.11-175802/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

And there's been a long running thread on the Camaro forum:  https://www.camaro6.com/forums/showthread.php?t=622276 as well as the Mozilla Foundation report from last September:   https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

Many of the people affected by this never opted in or agreed to be tracked.  Apparently it's not unusual for the dealers to "helpfully" enable these features for their customers.  I'm staying with pre-network enabled cars for as long as I can.  You'll have to pry my cold dead hands from the steering wheel...

EDIT:  Found the thread over in Off Topic.  Didn't look there, seems pretty On Topic to me.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/psa-insurance-companies-can-get-accel-speed-data-from-newer-cars-built-in-systems/264288/page1/

I've been saying this for awhile now.  This should surprise no one.

I requested mine from them a few days ago. We really need better data privacy laws. There are so many issues with these systems. They have incredibly low thresholds for flagging you. They dont know context or have any proof an 'event' is good or bad for YOUR driving. They can't prove who was driving. They dont flag inattentive or distracted drivers, who are far more dangerous. They are just a way to justify higher rates and more profit. The way things are going with automated tickets and your car spying on you, it makes me want to jump straight to self driving cars for the street. 

How does it tell if you're speeding if it doesn't know where you've driven?  

In reply to jmabarone :

Its may not report where you drive, but a lot of cars know the speed limit in the gps database and could use that. Ive also heard elsewhere that it is something like 'above 80mph' and doesn't really track location for speed.

There is a thread on this on the Off-Topic board.