On March 11th, new york times published a report detailing Ken Dahl's story. Two years ago, Mr. Dahl noticed that the insurance premium on his Chevrolet Volt had jumped 21%. Although Mr. Dahl has never been in an accident, this increase is a result of his driving habits. Without his knowledge, Dahl had agreed that information about his driving habits could be provided by General Motors to data brokers LexisNexis and Verisk. The data was shared with brokers through GM's driving insights app, Smart Driver.
“They're taking information that I didn't know would be shared and ruining our insurance,” Dahl told the Times.time new york times Reached for comment, GM said vehicle owners are responsible for the data their drivers share. However, I got a different response from GM. “As of March 20th, OnStar Smart Driver customer data is no longer shared with LexisNexis or Verisk. Customer trust is a top priority for us, and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies. It turns out that General Motors was “actively evaluating” its privacy processes. On April 24, GM announced that “customer feedback” led to the end of sales of the smart driver.
Smart Driver promised to help customers become better drivers by monitoring their driving behavior and aggregating the data into a score. Insurance companies monitoring someone's driving habits may be a familiar story. Insurers such as Allstate and Progressive both offer programs that monitor driver inputs such as braking and accelerating via dongles, in addition to recording location data along with date and time.of new york times Reporter Casimir Hill says she went through the registration process for Smart Driver, GM's version of drive reporting software. During her registration, she wrote, “there were no warnings or prominent disclosures that third parties would access my driving data.” Mr. Hill found that some GM dealers may be incentivized through bonuses to sign smart drivers to eligible OnStar companies.
In Dahl's case, his Bolt flagged 640 trips and recorded various driving actions along the way. For example, Dahl reported two hard acceleration and two hard braking incidents during a 7-mile run on a Thursday in June. Mr. Dahl obtained his report and discovered data sharing under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Such cases can be presented to insurance companies, who can adjust (in his case raise) premiums for what they claim are dangerous driving habits.
On April 23, Hill published a follow-up article. The contents, briefly, show that both she and her husband were enrolled in Smart Driver, even though she had not opted in. Hill said she didn't opt ​​in, but she spoke with other owners who had registered as well. GM told Hill that she and her husband were part of a small group of owners who had been informed but were told otherwise due to a “bug.” The insurance companies had the data, but the Hills and others like them didn't know they were getting it.
In addition to killing Smart Driver and deregistering all GM customers from the program, GM says it has “terminated its partnerships with LexisNexis and Verisk” and ended data sharing with both companies as of March 20. Stated. General Motors also said it is working to strengthen privacy controls for owners. Following this report, new leadership was also introduced. GM has hired a new chief trust and privacy officer, Alisa Bergman.