General Motors reported in its quarterly earnings report this week that profits rose significantly in the first three months of the year, citing strong sales of gasoline-powered vehicles as a key reason for the strong performance.
But it's not all good news for GM these days. The New York Times reported in March that GM collects data on driver behavior and sells it to data brokers, who then share that information with insurance companies. Many GM vehicle drivers reported that they had no idea their data was being collected, let alone shared.
Kashmir Hill was the reporter for this story. She joined “Marketplace” host Kimberly Adams to talk about how she knew she was among the GM car owners being tracked.
Kimberly Adams: So, in March, you published a story about GM sharing consumer driving habits. Can you give us some background on what you discovered back then?
hills of kashmir: yes. So it turns out automakers are collecting information from people's cars about how they drive: how many miles they drive, when they brake too hard or accelerate too quickly. . And they were sharing it with risk profiling companies, including LexisNexis, and then with insurance companies, influencing how much people were paying for insurance.
Adams: And is GM the only one doing this?
hill: Other companies were doing it too. But essentially, I discovered this story because I saw people on an online car forum who were driving his GM cars and their insurance premiums were going up. They asked the insurance company why. And the insurance company said, check out the LexisNexis report. And you'll find hundreds of pages of records of all the trips they've taken by car. And they had no idea that that data was being collected by GM.
Adams: And only recently have you found yourself among the drivers being tracked. How did you get involved in this?
hill: Well, while reporting this article, I was very conscious of the fact that I was driving a GM car. So I checked to see if this was happening to us. I requested a LexisNexis report, but it did not include driving data. But after this story came out, her husband requested her LexisNexis report, and when it arrived, it contained all of our driving data. The dealer listed him as the primary owner of the car, so all the data was just listed on his report.
Adams: And you absolutely don't remember that you agreed to share this data?
hill: No, I was shocked, but at the same time, this is what GM car drivers were telling me, and they said, “I don't know how you signed up for this.” I don't understand why this happens to me. ” Therefore, this was a unique opportunity for me to report my own consumer experience and find out when I subscribed to this. How did I sign up for this? And that's what I did. It started with a phone call to a salesperson asking about this.
Adams: And when you talked to that salesman, and then the GM of the company itself, what did they say about why something like this happened?
hill: Then I learned that there is a screen that car buyers are supposed to show at the dealership. It's part of his enrollment in OnStar, a connected service for GM vehicles. Neither my husband nor I remember seeing that screen.And the salesman said to me, “I personally he only registers people for OnStar, and on that screen I always see[はい]Press “said. He didn't know that it would be registering us to share all our driving data with data brokers. When I went to the dealership and asked about it, a more senior salesman said, “We show this screen to our customers all the time, and they say yes. GM said we should do the same.” But even if you're looking at the screen, risk profiling companies and There was nothing written about this being shared with the insurance company. It just wasn't disclosed. As of last month, GM stopped sharing this data with data brokers. And in fact, they said right before I published this article that they were completely retiring the Smart His Driver His program and deregistering the millions of people currently in the program.
Adams: So what lessons do you think people should take away from this experience about connected cars in general?
hill: One of the reasons I've been covering these stories is because I want people to understand that cars are connected. I don't think many people realize how many sensors are installed in their car. As you know, seats are increasingly equipped with cameras that detect weight. Today, cars are equipped with so many data collection devices that are sent back to the car manufacturer. And I think we need to talk about this as a society. What should automakers be allowed to do with that data? There's a really good reason they have it. For example, we can see that we can send you recall notifications when something goes wrong with your vehicle, but we're also looking at selling this data. And this can be very personal. This includes when you drive your car and where you drive your car. One advocate I spoke to said it should be your data. It should not belong to the car manufacturer and should not be allowed to be sold.
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