General Motors is paying out $220 million to settle a lawsuit that alleges it sold drivers’ driving behavior and location data and then sold it to insurance companies.
“For many drivers, insurers used that data in part to set their rates,” said a Thursday press release from Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. It noted that Oregon and Washington led a coalition of 36 attorneys general to sue the Michigan-based automaker.
Rayfield’s office said that GM enrolled millions of drivers in its Smart Driver program from 2016 to 2024 and told drivers that it would not collect data without their permission. When the coalition investigated the program, it found that GM did collect information – and that it sold the data to data brokers under contracts that specified the data was to be used for insurance products.
“Most people who ended up in Smart Driver were enrolled at the dealership when they bought their car, through a single sign-up process that also enrolled them in GM’s OnStar services,” said the press release from Rayfield’s office. “In many cases, dealership employees allegedly accepted the terms and conditions on customers’ behalf without their consent.”
GM was also allegedly “aggressively pushing dealerships to sign up as many OnStar customers as possible,” around this time. In fact, Rayfield’s office said sales employees earned bonuses based in part on how many customers they enrolled in GM’s connected vehicle services, while dealerships were ranked by their enrollment numbers.
More than 370,000 drivers were even erroneously told that they weren’t enrolled in the Smart Driver program via the OnStar app, Rayfield’s office said. Even though those customers were “quietly unenrolled,” the data collected on them still ended up in the hands of insurance companies.
“The data was personal, identifiable, and specific,” Rayfield’s office said. “Insurers could see how many times a person drove, the start and end time of each trip, how often they braked or accelerated hard, and whether they went over the speed limit. As The New York Times reported, insurance companies used this information to change rates, sometimes raising people’s premiums. GM ended the Smart Driver program after the Times reported on these practices.”
In addition to handing over millions, GM has also been ordered to get drivers’ “affirmative, express consent before it collects or shares their driving and location data,” said Rayfield’s office. Under the settlement agreement,
GM is required to drivers’ affirmative, express consent before collecting or sharing their driving and location data; limit the driving data it collects and protect consumers’ personal information through a comprehensive data privacy program; undergo internal and external assessments of its data protection and privacy program; and put oversight and training in place at its dealerships so customers aren’t signed up for data collection without their consent.
“People bought a car, not a tracking device,” Rayfield explained. “GM told drivers this program would help them drive more safely and promised it wouldn’t share their data with insurers without permission. Our investigation found GM sold that data anyway, and some drivers paid for it with higher premiums. This settlement puts people back in control of their own information.”
According to Lending Tree, the average cost of full coverage car insurance in 2026 is $177 a month, or $2,124 a year. Drivers pay about $68 a month, or $816 a year, for minimum coverage.
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission finalized an order with General Motors and OnStar settling allegations that they collected, used, and sold consumer geolocation and driving behavior data. Per the FTC, that order prohibited GM from sharing certain consumer data with consumer reporting agencies.
