Keith Tanner said:Curtis, did you read the article? It is exactly about comparing different drivers and using that to determine insurance premiums for individuals.
All insurance company's used to have clauses that using the car to race, voids the policy. I'd be surprised if they don't now.
In reply to DirtyBird222 :
My license was once suspended (with zero notification to me) for same reason. I was able to prove I was not at fault. DMV said "ok, pay the fine and reinstatement fee and we can give you your license back" Uh? What? Tried to fight that one. But lost and need a license, so had to pay it.
But yep. Or gov. , corporations, and insurance are all run by ethical people.
General motors has a complete record of every drive, every stop, every acceleration event for my 2019 truck. It's constantly monitored and they'll share the data with me if I subscribe (I don't). As for driving an older vehicle to avoid this, you better do it with your phone/watch/tablet turned off. We live in a monitored, interconnected world folks, get used to it, or move to someplace far less civilized.
03Panther said:Keith Tanner said:Curtis, did you read the article? It is exactly about comparing different drivers and using that to determine insurance premiums for individuals.
All insurance company's used to have clauses that using the car to race, voids the policy. I'd be surprised if they don't now.
It's always been don't attempt to make a claim based on a racing incident. That puts you into the fraud category and ultimately canceled.
Remember Subaru or maybe it was Mitsubishi and the free track night? Which then voided your warranty for using said track night.
The laws rarely keep up with technological advances, and laws don't get changed unless there is enough outrage or money thrown around to change them.
Here is a link to read the article without a paywall.
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
And, by that very act of buying the truck, that gave them "permission " to share that information with whoever they decide. And they absolutely do.
In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :
I'll agree to the right to limit liability but at the same time, outright cancellation without just cause is a bit too much. Insurance is a game of risk vs reward. It's why Jake is cancelling policies left and right because they lost what, 3billion last quarter? I dislike the notion of being cancelled because of fixable causes without regard to being able to fix them. At the same time though both sides can't have their cake and eat it too. If my tires randomly catch fire and torch the county, I expect to have no recourse. But also just because I have them doesn't immediately imply they will catch fire or even when. What if the photos don't show, I have a government accepted containment system in place? Now I have to fight for reinstatement because someone or something from many miles away decided I have a hazard without asking about it.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:General motors has a complete record of every drive, every stop, every acceleration event for my 2019 truck. It's constantly monitored and they'll share the data with me if I subscribe (I don't). As for driving an older vehicle to avoid this, you better do it with your phone/watch/tablet turned off. We live in a monitored, interconnected world folks, get used to it, or move to someplace far less civilized.
Precisely. That phone you carry in the car is far more intrusive than the data being shared by the car. I know I'm an oddball, but as of now I don't really give a crap about the data being collected by the car. I'm quite happy to have all the electronic advantages over cars built 30 years ago.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:As for driving an older vehicle to avoid this, you better do it with your phone/watch/tablet turned off. We live in a monitored, interconnected world folks, get used to it, or move to someplace far less civilized.
Privacy on phones can be managed to at least some extent - you can turn off services for apps, and look at the privacy policy of an app before you load it. Or just not load it. Yes, I have an smart phone with only a handful of apps loaded and services shut down when I'm not using the app. I think people are finally figuring out that the flashlight app shouldn't have access to your contact list, messages, call history etc. At least I hope so. Do you really want Ford/GM/etc to have access to all that? Did you connect your phone to the car?
One of the things that bothers me is a asymmetry of the surveillance. You are the product, whether you think you agreed to it or now, and we trade that for convenience and "free" services. While I worked at Sun in the nineties the CEO came out and said "You have zero privacy, get over it". Was controversial back then.
In reply to jwagner (Forum Supporter) :
It's not the app on your phone you should be concerned about. It's the physical phone itself. The software built into the phone from the factory tracks a lot more than what your car does. You can turn off all the apps you want, but there is still a ton of data being collected. You would need to completely power down the phone.
In my case my phone is rooted, running an open-source Android distro, so the only privacy issue inherent to having it turned on is the fact that it's connected to cell towers, and thus the telecom companies have a record of my location - cell networks happen to know roughly where you are at present due to how the network works, and storing that info for later access is trivial and common.
Now, the cell provider doesn't package up data of when you're driving on roads and sell that to LexisNexis who sells it to your car insurance company...at least not yet...but do keep in mind that cell location data is one of the major factors that got GixxerBrah identified and arrested.
New business model: Send me your OnStar module, I'll send it emulated CAN data.
Keith Tanner said:Capability, but you have to sign up for it - which is being done by salespeople without your knowledge, or hidden behind pages and pages of EULA gibberish.
I deal with these contracts for a living. I can guarantee it's in one of the many hyperlinks in the contract.
Don't sign contracts with hyperlinks or at the very least without reading them.
I think about this article in terms of the discussions we've had in the past about "per-mileage road use taxation"... and how many of the replies were "there's no way that could happen, it would be too hard to collect the data". between this, and all the plate reading cameras getting rolled out, I suspect it won't be that hard after all.
Tom1200 said:Keith Tanner said:Capability, but you have to sign up for it - which is being done by salespeople without your knowledge, or hidden behind pages and pages of EULA gibberish.
I deal with these contracts for a living. I can guarantee it's in one of the many hyperlinks in the contract.
Don't sign contracts with hyperlinks or at the very least without reading them.
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but related to this: The hospital/physicians group that I use has these little digital pen pad capture devices everywhere. When you show up for an appointment, they give you the pen pad and say "sign here". It's not a thing that displays something and then you sign. It's one of these:
And then they get all bent out of shape when I say "okay.. what am I signing?" "Oh, it's just consent to treat you". "How do I know that? What am I signing? Give me a document to read and put my signature on and I'll sign it, but I have no idea what I'm agreeing to with this."
MadScientistMatt said:New business model: Send me your OnStar module, I'll send it emulated CAN data.
Shut up and take my Red Barchetta!
Link to request the data they have on you: https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/consumer
You can also opt out via that link.
It will be interesting to see if, and what they have on me.
In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :
I agree with you, and IIRC not even shutting down the phone will always work.
I think the big difference between your phone tracking you and your car tracking you is that you can choose to leave the former at home. Leaving the latter at home kinda defeats its purpose as a vehicle, so it's harder to escape the surveillance.
In reply to wae :
All of my offices have a monitor that shows the document, just have to use the pen thingy to sign.
In reply to BoxheadTim :
True that. Though I'd love to see someone leave their phone at home without having an anxiety attack 
From my experience in the insurance world, the data isn't being used for anything nefarious. It's either used for accident investigation (with permission from the owner) or for underwriting purposes. Underwriting doesn't use it to try to jack rates and make profit. They want to do their best to know if the $3000 premium you give them is going to cost them $100,000 in a liability claim. That's what things like the Progressive "snapshot" program are intended for. If data says you are a conservative driver (no, I don't know the algorithms that define it) then your rates are lower. If you drive like you live in Jersey, rates will be higher or they will decline the risk.
jharry3 said:I just re-watched Orwell's 1984 staring Richard Burton. I could see the Ominous Parallels of what happened to Winston Smith to today's Total Information Awareness situation.
We are the most spied upon people in history. Every thing we do on a computer is subject to be recorded and filed away for future use, if necessary.
As far as data collection goes check out this.
Federal Agencies Are Secretly Buying Consumer Data | Brennan Center for Justice
The Ominous Parallels - Wikipedia
Total Information Awareness - Wikipedia
This is all way beyond Insurance companies monitoring your 4 wheel drifts and "jack rabbit" starts.
Nah, I'm probably being paranoid.
SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) said:In reply to BoxheadTim :
True that. Though I'd love to see someone leave their phone at home without having an anxiety attack
Well, there is that. Although I occasionally think about resurrecting my iPod. Then again, given the reliability of my vehicles I might be anxiety attack prone as well 
.
From my experience in the insurance world, the data isn't being used for anything nefarious. It's either used for accident investigation (with permission from the owner) or for underwriting purposes. Underwriting doesn't use it to try to jack rates and make profit. They want to do their best to know if the $3000 premium you give them is going to cost them $100,000 in a liability claim. That's what things like the Progressive "snapshot" program are intended for. If data says you are a conservative driver (no, I don't know the algorithms that define it) then your rates are lower. If you drive like you live in Jersey, rates will be higher or they will decline the risk.
"Drive like you live in Jersey", that made me chuckle.
I think I may need to differentiate things a little bit here. I don't have a problem with sharing this type of data with one's insurance company as long as it's consensual and based on a reasonably informed decision made by the customer. What I have a problem with is if the manufacturer provides that data to my insurer with only a bit of hand waving and worst case, someone in the sales department simply activating this feature without telling the customer, or at least without explaining to the customer what they consent to.
I also take issue with the typical opt-out approach on features like that, because it's way to easy to assume that the reason it's opt out is because if it was opt in, too many people would opt out.
So basically, if I'm aware of the data logging, I can make an informed decision (note I said informed, not good) and maybe take the burner phone and pay cash for a taxi when visiting my super secret stash of cars that my spouse shouldn't know about.
sleepyhead the buffalo said:I think about this article in terms of the discussions we've had in the past about "per-mileage road use taxation"... and how many of the replies were "there's no way that could happen, it would be too hard to collect the data". between this, and all the plate reading cameras getting rolled out, I suspect it won't be that hard after all.
I don't know who said "per-mileage road use taxation" would be difficult, because it wouldn't be.
Every time you go to the tag office to renew your tag, have a physical worker come out and they make you show them the mileage. Enter it in the system, compare to last year, and "Here is your tax for this year."
Here in OK, they do that with any new registration (not subsequent ones though) so they can put the mileage on the title when it transferred possesion.
I don't want my driving habits used arbitrarily to determine my insurance. I've been a road racer, hold both competition and instructor licenses and have a squeaky clean claim record. If I happen to enjoy the experience of higher g forces for a few minutes, I don't think I should be penalized for that. My skill level at more extreme data inputs is very different than the 16 year old in his new Honda Vtec y0! dodging through traffic.
I've often thought it would be nice if there was a tiered license system that would allow the more highly trained of us to use 'reasonable and prudent' as the speed limit vs what some sign says, but I also like reading fiction.
My insurance agent asked me if I wanted to get a discount by putting one of those insurance plug in things in to my OBD port. She quickly realized her mistake and said that was probably not a good idea. Soon after that she changed my insurance to another company that was cheaper. It helps when your agent is a car enthusiast.
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