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US senators claim car makers sold driver data for pennies (www.theregister.com)

submitted 3 months ago by memfree to c/technology

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm hoping Lina Khan keeps up her good work (and that Harris keeps Khan as the FTC head). | archive

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Edward Markey (D-MA) sent a letter [PDF] to the US regulator's boss Lina Khan on Friday after the pair conducted an investigation into General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai.

Honda buried the disclosures about its business relationship with Verisk, which did not appear on the first page, and were not likely to be seen by many consumers.

GM and Hyundai allegedly neglected to mention selling data to Verisk at all.

If GM car owners wanted notifications about things like attempted break-ins and vehicle component health, they needed to sign up for the manufacturer's Smart Driver program, and doing so would quietly opt them into allowing their info to be sold on.

"The lengthy disclosures presented by GM before the opt-in did not disclose to consumers that as part of enrolling in Smart Driver, their driving data would be shared with data brokers and resold to insurance companies," the senators alleged, adding GM "disclosed customer location data to two other companies, which it refused to name."

Hyundai apparently enrolled its drivers into a similar Drive Score program without even asking, if they enabled the internet connection on the vehicle.

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[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Oh, like we've been saying for years, and everyone calls us paranoid.

🤦🏼‍♂️

So what's their angle? What are they really trying to accomplish with this?

[–] memfree 10 points 3 months ago

Who? The Senators? I think they're genuinely interested in stopping the practice (obviously it also gets them good press, possibly even votes, but they coulda probably got cash if they did nothing).

I think the car companies are just trying to make money anywhere they can.

[–] drwho 3 points 3 months ago

They have stuff going on that would wind up in the data sold and are moving to cover their butts?

(It's DC. There's always "stuff going on.")