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Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission issued an unprecedented penalty against General Motors: a five-year ban on selling customer data to consumer reporting agencies and third-party data brokers.
For years, GM had been collecting all sorts of data on its customers — such as how often they sped or whether they drove at night — and selling it to brokers to generate risk profiles for insurance companies. More often than not, drivers were unaware of the degree to which their data was being collected. Many had unknowingly consented to it by signing up for an OnStar connected services plan, which activated a feature called Smart Driver that collected their driving data.
GM was then turning around and sharing that data with two data brokers, LexisNexis and Verisk, both of which work with the insurance industry. In a 2024 blockbuster investigative report by The New York Times, some drivers said their insurance rates went up as a result of the data collection. The enrollment process was so confusing that many vehicle owners had no idea their data was being shared. Under the settlement with the FTC, GM has to make it easier for drivers to turn off location tracking, as well as enable them to access and delete their data collected by the automaker.
But GM isn’t the only automaker vacuuming up data on its customers. A team of researchers from the Mozilla Foundation spent months examining the privacy policies of all the major car companies for a report they were working on in 2023. Their conclusion: Every single one had “horrible privacy and security,” said Jen Caltrider, who helped author the study. Not only that, but customers were forced to accept overlapping policies for the car, the connected services, the smartphone app, and the financial services through which they received their loan — all of which included data collection provisions.
“And so it was really overwhelming trying to understand what was going on,” Caltrider said.
There has been plenty of corroborating evidence for this. Consumer Reports published its own investigation last year that concluded “nearly every automaker that sells cars in the U.S. is similarly collecting and sharing so-called ‘driver behavior data’ with other companies and continues to do so.”
Cars are particularly problematic compared to phones because the privacy controls are less intuitive. A smartphone owner can generally find and tweak their privacy settings. With a vehicle, the data collection is spread across multiple systems and policies, making it much harder for consumers to understand what is happening. It feels like a free-for-all because automakers are collecting enormous amounts of information without much public scrutiny.
After GM was penalized as a result of the Times investigation, the issue of data privacy and cars appears to finally be getting some scrutiny. But as is often the case, policymakers may be missing the mark on how to address it.
Last December, a trio of House Republicans introduced the Data Rights for Information and Vehicle Electronics in Real-time, or DRIVER, Act. According to these lawmakers, the bill “reaffirms a basic principle: if you own the vehicle, you should own the data it generates.”
But while the bill would give vehicle owners a bit more control over their data, it would also allow automakers to continue gathering and selling it to third-party data brokers, which makes it a nonstarter for privacy advocates. As Caltrider notes, access and deletion rights are not the same thing as preventing excess collection in the first place. If an automaker can collect enormous amounts of information and the consumer must then go through an arduous process to discover what was collected and request that it be deleted, the burden remains on the individual. Most privacy advocates would rather see a system in which automakers simply do not collect so much information to begin with.
The issue has even risen to the level of MAGA World. Last July, Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, sent a letter to Congress outlining the administration’s policy priorities for the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill. Tucked in the letter was a new concept called “the Freedom Car,” which Duffy described as Americans’ right to “drive disconnected and non-automated” vehicles. The proposal would ban the government from requiring that vehicles be equipped with automated driving systems or have the capability to transmit data wirelessly — which, to my knowledge, no one is trying to do.
It’s unclear whether the DRIVER Act or the Freedom Car will ever clear the hurdles in Washington to become real policies. What is clear is that there is significant demand for simpler vehicles. People are asking why they can’t just buy a car without all the sensors and data collection. They look at new concepts like the Slate Truck and wonder whether they could also use something more bare-bones.
Sure, consumers may accept useful safety equipment such as backup cameras, but many don’t want their vehicle tracking everything they do — and they definitely don’t want to see ads on their vehicle screens. (BMW, I’m looking at you.) Nor do they want Flock cameras tracking their every movement while they drive down the street.
But automakers have every incentive to keep collecting data because there is money to be made from it. As long as the broader data economy rewards companies for gathering and monetizing information, there’s little reason for automakers to voluntarily abandon the practice.
- Every automaker has its own privacy page where vehicle owners can submit requests, including opting out of data collection. Of course, they’re all buried under mountains of legalese, so good luck finding it.
- Same goes for all the smartphone apps for connected car services. Changing your privacy settings in those apps is generally a little easier.
- The New York Times’ investigation into GM’s data collection program is worth a read, if just for the flabbergasted reactions from drivers who couldn’t understand why their insurance rates were going up.
- Edmunds and Consumer Reports both did the work to ask every automaker for their data collection policies. There’s a lot of variety across the industry.
- These Redditors are crowdsourcing a list of new cars (from 2019 onward) that aren’t digitally connected and/or transmitting data to the car company’s servers. Spoiler alert: It’s a pretty short list!
