Your car has been spying on you And collecting dataThat alone is worrying to many, but a recent letter sent by two US senators to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reveals something even more sinister: That data is being sold to insurance companies for a fraction of the cost.
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The New York Times reports that Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts — both privacy advocates — have sent a letter letter to the FTC on July 26. In it, the senators called on General Motors, Hyundai and Honda to collect driving data from customers’ vehicles. The data collected included things like how quickly a driver accelerated, how hard he braked and how often he exceeded the speed limit. The letter goes on to say that this data was sold to insurance companies so they could assess the driver’s risk.
One of the surprising findings of an investigation by Senator Wyden’s office was how little automakers made from selling driving data. According to the letter, data analytics firm Verisk paid Honda $25,920 over four years for information on 97,000 cars, or 26 cents per car. Hyundai was paid just over $1 million, or 61 cents per car, over six years.
While GM would not say exactly how much it sold the data for, sources close to the matter said The times The automaker sold data on more than eight million vehicles in the “low million dollar” class. Worse still is how the automaker informed drivers that their data was being collected. The times says Hyundai collected data from every vehicle with an internet connection. GM and Honda gave drivers the option to opt in, but Sen. Wyden says it was misleading.
Since the original reporting on the data collectionGM has stopped collecting data. However, a letter from the automaker to the FTC says that the automaker is still sharing location data, that it “has not asked customers for permission to share the location of their cars,” and that the only way to stop location sharing is to turn off the car’s internet connection. Hyundai and Honda have both released statements about the situation to The times:
A Honda spokesman, Chris Martin, said Verisk had provided a driving score service to its customers and that “no identifiable consumer information was shared with an insurance company” without customers’ consent.
Hyundai also offered a driving score service. Ira Gabriel, a spokesman for the company, said the terms and conditions of the Bluelink connected car service informed customers that data would be shared with Verisk when they activated Bluelink at the dealership. Verisk shared the data with insurance companies only with the customer’s consent, Mr. Gabriel said.
“Verisk paid Hyundai for potential future revenue from customers who actively opted into the insurance feature,” he said in a statement.
The times says this is the third letter the FTC has received from Congress calling for an investigation into data collection. Senators Wyden and Markey hope FTC Chair Lina Khan will look into it, with their letter stating that Americans’ driving data should not be sold without their consent:
…it’s especially insulting to automakers who sell cars for tens of thousands of dollars and then squeeze a few cents of profit out of consumers’ private data.
A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik.
The post GM, Hyundai and Honda sell driving data to auto insurers first appeared on Frugals ca.
