(TNS) — If your car was made by General Motors, it may know a lot about you and be spilling the beans to credit bureaus — whether you know it or not.
Every time you speed, slam the brakes, or even drive late at night, General Motors has been tracking it all and sending reports to the credit bureaus that could affect your insurance rate, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
“GM monitored and sold people’s precise geolocation data and driver behavior information, sometimes as often as every three seconds,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.
In a landmark move to protect consumer privacy, the FTC has taken action against General Motors and its OnStar division for allegedly collecting and selling sensitive geolocation and driving behavior data from millions of vehicles — without the drivers’ clear consent.
“Tracking and collecting geolocation data can be extremely privacy invasive, revealing some of the most intimate details about a person’s life, such as whether they visited a hospital or other medical facility, and expose their daily routines,” the agency said in a statement.
Under a proposed settlement, GM and OnStar will be banned for five years from sharing this information with consumer reporting agencies, marking the FTC’s first enforcement on connected vehicle data.
A handful of local General Motors dealership managers declined to comment on the record for this report, saying they were not aware of the FTC action and had not heard of complaints from customers about their OnStar systems.
Several automakers offer systems similar to GM’s OnStar service. Subaru offers Starlink subscriptions that provide remote lock and unlock, roadside assistance, monthly vehicle health reports and stolen vehicle recovery. Hyundai offers a connected car service through Bluelink and Nissan provides NissanConnect.
The services typically track driver habits in order to market service-related coupons for “drivers who brake hard or brake a lot,” said one local manager. “They send you flyers in the mail if you want to get new brakes or something like that. But I’ve never heard of anything like insurance companies getting information.”
Michigan-based GM has offered OnStar as a hand-free voice assistant that helps with emergencies, traffic and navigation. The FTC found that over time the company widened the scope of its data collection to include geolocation collected as often as every three seconds from some of its users.
The agency said that GM encouraged vehicle buyers to sign up for OnStar and its Smart Driver feature, which was intended to assess their driving habits, but alleged that the enrollment process was “confusing and misleading.”
“In fact, some consumers were unaware that they had been signed up for the Smart Driver feature,” according to the complaint.
The company also didn’t clearly disclose what information it would be collecting or that it would be selling that data to third parties.
“Many consumers were unaware of these practices and complained to GM after finding out their driving habits were being used by insurance companies to set their rates,” the FTC said.
The FTC’s proposed order, which will go up for public comment for 30 days, would prohibit GM and OnStar from misrepresenting information about how they collect, use and share consumer location and driver behavior data; prohibit sharing that data with consumer reporting agencies, allow customers to obtain, limit and delete their data.
