GM agrees to pay $12.75M in California driver privateness settlement

Common Motors has reached a privacy-related settlement with a bunch of legislation enforcement companies led by California Legal professional Common Rob Bonta.

Again in 2024, The New York Occasions reported that automakers together with GM had been sharing details about their clients’ driving habits with insurance coverage firms, and that some clients had been involved that their insurance coverage charges had gone up consequently.

The settlement announcement from Bonta’s workplace equally alleges that GM offered “the names, contact data, geolocation knowledge, and driving habits knowledge of a whole bunch of hundreds of Californians” to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Danger Options, that are each knowledge brokers.  Bonta’s workplace additional alleges that this knowledge was collected by GM’s OnStar program, and that the corporate made roughly $20 million from knowledge gross sales.

Nevertheless, Bonta’s workplace additionally mentioned the info didn’t result in elevated insurance coverage costs in California, “doubtless as a result of below California’s insurance coverage legal guidelines, insurers are prohibited from utilizing driving knowledge to set insurance coverage charges.”

As a part of the settlement, GM has agreed to pay $12.75 million in civil penalties and to cease promoting driving knowledge to any client reporting companies for 5 years, Bonta’s workplace mentioned. GM has additionally agreed to delete any driver knowledge that it nonetheless retains inside 180 days (until it obtains consent from clients), and to request that Lexis and Verisk delete that knowledge.

“Common Motors offered the info of California drivers with out their information or consent and regardless of quite a few statements reassuring drivers that it will not accomplish that,” Bonta mentioned in a press release, including that the settlement “requires Common Motors to desert these unlawful practices and underscores the significance of the info minimization in California’s privateness legislation — firms can’t simply maintain on to knowledge and use it later for one more objective.”

GM had beforehand settled with the Federal Commerce Fee over its knowledge gross sales, with a ultimate order banning Common Motors and OnStar from promoting sure knowledge with client reporting companies.

GM told Reuters that the settlement “addresses Sensible Driver, a product we discontinued in 2024, and reinforces steps we’ve taken to strengthen our privateness practices.”