A new report shows several automakers are sharing your driving data with insurance companies, which may be increasing your rates -- and you might not even know about it.
According to the report by The New York Times, car makers including General Motors, Honda, Kia and Hyundai offer internet-enabled features in their vehicles that not only track driving habits -- such as hard braking and sharp accelerations -- but share that information with data brokers.
Data brokers then take that information and share it with insurance companies, who can use it to increase a driver's rate or make it impossible for a driver to get insurance.
The big problem, according to the report, is that the data collection and sharing with third-parties is happening regardless of whether drivers opt in to tracking features or not.
A Seattle man interviewed in the article claims his insurance increased by 21% and that an agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor. When he obtained the nearly 260-page report, he found it listed every trip he and his wife made in the last six months, including the distance they traveled and how fast they were going; the only thing it didn't have is where they had driven the car, according to The Times.
The report indicates that many drivers don't realize when they use certain features in their connected-cars -- many of which claim to help a person become a better driver or improve vehicle performance -- it gives automakers the green light to share information about how they drive with data brokers like LexisNexis. Even more troubling, the report goes on, is that some drivers claim they were tracked even though they didn't use certain features, and their insurance went up as a result.
Automakers say these features are optional, that drivers must give consent to data sharing and that they can unenroll at any time. However, The Times report tested at least one enrollment process and found no warning or prominent disclosure that data would be shared with any third party.
According to the report, some drivers don't realize when they accept user terms and privacy statements for connected apps, perhaps because the language is buried in legal contracts, they are consenting to data sharing. Other drivers may have unknowingly signed up when they purchased their vehicle.
In any event, Jen Caltrider, a researcher at Mozilla, said it's a "privacy nightmare."
"The car companies are really good at trying to link these features to safety and say they are all about safety," Caltrider told The Times. "They're about making money."