We’ve previously reported on how General Motors collects and sells data millions of drivers into the insurance industry, but now it seems that Recent York Times the reporter who first broke the story also got involved in this espionage. This happened to her and her husband in their home 2023 Chevy Shop even though they have taken all necessary steps to protect their car against burglary spying on them.
The couple were none the wiser until they received it LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk reports – two data brokers cooperating with the insurance industry and GM provides data to. Her husband’s report included a breakdown of 203 car trips since January. This included data such as distance, start and finish times, and aggressive driving data. The Verisk report was from mid-December and included 297 trips. At the top was a high-level summary: 289.89 miles traveled, 4251 minutes driving, 170 events requiring ponderous braking24 swift acceleration events and zero speed events.
This is all very normal for people who give consent to OnStar and an online services plan, as well as Sharp Drive, a program that offers feedback and digital badges to confirm good driving. However, this wasn’t what the couple signed up for. WITH Recent York Times: :
It wasn’t us – and I checked to make sure. In mid-January, again while reporting, I connected our car to the MyChevrolet app to see if we were enrolled in Sharp Driver. The app said no, so we had no access to any information about how we were driving.
However, in April, when we learned that our driving was being tracked, my husband logged into the browser version of his account page on GM.com, where it showed that our car was registered with “OnStar Sharp Driver+”. GM says this discrepancy between the app and website was the result of an “error” that affected a “tiny population” of customers. This group got the worst possible version of Sharp Driver: We couldn’t get insight into our driving, but insurance companies could.
The author of this story and her husband were not alone including. WITH NOW: :
Since my article appeared, many GM owners have contacted similar accounts. Jenn Archer of Illinois bought a Chevy Trailblazer in April 2022. She didn’t subscribe to OnStar and had never heard of Sharp Driver, but last month she discovered that LexisNexis had her driving data.
“I was furious,” she said. Her insurance rate has increased by 50 percent in the last two years.
In 10 federal lawsuits filed last month, drivers across the country claim they did not knowingly register for the Sharp Driver program but recently learned that GM had provided LexisNexis with their driving data. According to one complaint, a Florida owner of a 2019 Cadillac CTS-V who drove it on the race track for events had his insurance premium nearly doubled, an raise of more than $5,000 a year.
At no point were drivers clearly informed that something like this would happen, not even in the fine print, they said. Recent reports reveal the reason: a misleading screen these people briefly saw when purchasing a car – if the salesperson had shown it to them.
GM said this back in March this year stopped sharing data with LexisNexis and Verisk, which cost them an annual income of several million. It also hired a up-to-date director of trust and privacy.
Here’s how it happened to the author and her husband. WITH the Times: :
According to GM, our car was registered for the Sharp Driver program when we purchased it from a Chevrolet dealership in Recent York during the paperwork rush that comes with purchasing a up-to-date vehicle. That this happened to me, the uncommon consumer who reads privacy policies and constantly searches for scary data, shows how little hope the typical car buyer had.
To find out how this happened, I called our dealership, which is a General Motors franchise, and spoke to the salesperson who sold us the car. He confirmed that he had signed us up for OnStar, noting that if we did not comply, his pay would be cut. He said it’s a mandate from GM, which sends the dealer a report card each month tracking registration percentage.
GM doesn’t just want dealers to sell cars; wants them to sell connected cars.
Our Bolt automatically comes with eight years of Connected Access, a feature we didn’t know about until recently. It allows GM to send software updates to our car, but also collect data from it – activities you agreed to when you signed up for OnStar.
Our salesperson described registration as a three-step process that he completes every day. He selects “yes” to enroll the customer in OnStar, then “yes” for the customer to receive text messages, and then “no” for an insurance product offered by GM that monitors driving behavior. (Sounds similar to Sharp Driver, but different.)
He does it so often, he said, that it has become automatic – yes, yes, no – and that in the latter case he always chooses “no” because such monitoring would be burdensome for customers.
Ms. Barker, the GM spokeswoman, said dealers were not allowed to sign up customers and that it was up to the customer to accept the terms. At my request, it provided a series of screens for dealers to show customers when they sign up for OnStar and Sharp Driver. At the top of each screen there is a message: “The customer must personally review and accept (or reject) the following terms and conditions.” This action is legally binding and cannot be performed by dealer personnel.”
The flow of screens was almost as my salesperson described, except for the second one regarding receiving messages, where he said he always clicked “yes”. This screen wasn’t just about accepting messages from the GM; also decided to apply the OnStar Sharp Driver.
This is a screen that my husband and I don’t remember – probably because our salesperson filled it out for us as part of his standard procedure.
Update: Friday, April 26, 2:00 PM EST: Jalopnik reached out to General Motors for more information, and a spokesperson provided us with the following statement:
At GM, we believe that vehicles are not just means of transportation – they are also technology platforms that can enrich the lives of our customers. Vehicles are becoming more connected, smart and personalized with features that improve the overall driving experience and safety on every journey. As our technology advances, we strive to be limpid about our privacy practices and give customers control over their data.
Over the last few weeks, we have heard from many customers about the OnStar Sharp Driver product. Customer trust is our priority, which is why we have taken several decisive actions and continue to review our processes:
OnStar Sharp Driver Retirement: We created the Sharp Driver product to promote safer driving behavior for the benefit of customers who choose to participate. However, we have decided to discontinue Sharp Driver in all GM vehicles and deregister all customers. This process will begin in the next few months.
Termination of cooperation with LexisNexis and Verisk: We have ended our cooperation with third-party telematics companies, LexisNexis and Verisk. All data sharing with these companies ended on March 20, 2024.
Strengthening privacy controls: We are working on improved privacy controls for greater transparency. At the same time, we are focused on providing customers with the ability to manage vehicle performance, diagnostics and, most importantly, what it takes to keep them and their vehicles unthreatening.
Recent management: Alisa Bergman will join General Motors as its up-to-date chief trust and privacy officer on April 29, 2024. She joins GM from Fanatics, where she served as chief privacy officer (CPO), and previously held CPO positions at Adobe and Warner Bros. She has served on the board of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and currently serves on the advisory boards of the IAPP AI Governance Center and the Future of Privacy Forum.
