Good:
One of the major data brokers engaged in the deeply alienating practice of selling detailed driver behavior data to insurers has shut down that business.
Verisk, which had collected data from cars made by General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai, has stopped receiving that data, according to The Record, a news site run by security firm Recorded Future. According to a statement provided to Privacy4Cars, and reported by The Record, Verisk will no longer provide a "Driving Behavior Data History Report" to insurers.
Skeptics have long assumed that car companies had at least some plan to monetize the rich data regularly sent from cars back to their manufacturers, or telematics. But a concrete example of this was reported by The New York Times' Kashmir Hill, in which drivers of GM vehicles were finding insurance more expensive, or impossible to acquire, because of the kinds of reports sent along the chain from GM to data brokers to insurers. Those who requested their collected data from the brokers found details of every trip they took: times, distances, and every "hard acceleration" or "hard braking event," among other data points.
You will no doubt be shocked to hear that car dealers "helped" customers opt-in, as part of getting their brand new vehicles ready for the road.
But it looks like the revenue from this didn't offset the bad PR and customer bad feelings associated with the program, and so they dropped it like a hot potato.
GM quickly announced a halt to data sharing in late March, days after the Times' reporting sparked considerable outcry. GM had been sending data to both Verisk and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the latter of which is not signaling any kind of retreat from the telematics pipeline. LexisNexis' telematics page shows logos for carmakers Kia, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.
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Disclosure of GM's stealthily authorized data sharing has sparked numerous lawsuits, investigations from California and Texas agencies, and interest from Congress and the Federal Trade Commission.
Act like a Rat Bastard, get treated like a Rat Bastard.
5 comments:
I suspect this is just the beginning.
"I see Mr. Borepatch, that you recently bought 10 boxes of ammunition, why would anyone need so much?"
"Our records show you going 90mph on your motorcycle, please send more money to our insurance company."
"That was a lot of beer you purchased last week, our health insurers are concerned for your wellbeing (and our profits)."
You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Wait until you encounter the toilets that sample your deposits, and send them along to whomever.
It's real:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/04/smart-toilet-monitors-for-signs-of-disease.html
The answer is obvious. Find a way to feed gibberish into the system; say something like I drove my car to Honolulu. Show multiple trips occurring at the same time, etc. Data is only valuable if it is useful.
It's not just GM. Ford's VP of marketing said that "they could track you wherever you went", and after the pushback, the next day said, "but we wouldn't do that."
Riiiight
I believe you, sure.
I've read the other car manufacturers have installed tracking as well.
I'd actually like to know a car/truck for sale that doesn't have telemetry.
The latest wrinkle I read was from Ford. A company bought a F-150 for use in a logging camp, and one day, it stopped working. They had it towed out, and suddenly it started working again. When the dealer to fix the problem, they were told that when the telemetry unit is unable to send the data wirelessly to Ford, it fills up the hard disk, and the computer then shuts the truck down until the data is sent.
So Ford has dealt with people who disconnect the wireless antenna or otherwise disable uploads to the Borg.
My work van records all of that shit, and I get an email monthly about the various noteworthy events, speeding, hard acceleration, hard braking, etc. If I do too much bad stuff, they can and will disallow me driving a company vehicle, and as I have to be able to do that to do my job, I'd lose my job almost immediately.
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