As cars become more connected, the question of what happens to your data is becoming just as important as what comes out of your speakers. General Motors has agreed to pay US$12.75 million (£9.45 million) to settle a legal case in California after it was accused of improperly collecting and selling customer driving data.
The issue centres around GM’s OnStar system, which is fitted to many US-market vehicles including models like the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Yukon. A subscription service linked to GPS and a phone network, it enables such services as automatic crash response, stolen vehicle tracking, remote diagnostics, and turn-by-turn navigation, with the blue OnStar button connecting drivers to a 24/7 call centre.
According to legal filings, OnStar collected information including customer names, locations and driving behaviour, which was then sold to data brokers. Those brokers reportedly passed the information to insurers, who could use it to influence policy pricing.
That means things like how hard you brake, how often you accelerate sharply, and how late you drive at night may not have stayed inside the car.
California attorney general Rob Bonta said: “Today’s settlement requires General Motors to abandon these illegal practices and underscores the importance of data minimisation in California’s privacy law.”
Under the settlement, GM is banned from selling driving data to consumer reporting agencies for five years and must delete retained data within 180 days unless it has explicit customer consent to keep it.
For UK drivers, this might sound like a US-only problem, but it raises a bigger issue. Modern connected cars all over the world are increasingly reliant on app ecosystems, cloud services and telematics.
Features like remote climate control, live traffic, over-the-air updates and vehicle tracking all rely on data being sent somewhere. Most of the time that’s useful. But stories like this show just how valuable that information can become when companies decide to monetise it.
As dashboards continue to evolve into rolling smart devices, drivers may want to pay as much attention to privacy settings as they do with everything else.
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