Senators Expose Car Companies’ Terrible Data Privacy Practices

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In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey urged the FTC to investigate several car companies caught selling and sharing customer information without clear consent. Alongside details previously gathered from reporting by The New York Times, the letter also showcases exactly how much this data is worth to the car companies selling this information.

Car companies collect a lot of data about driving behavior, ranging from how often you break to how rapidly you accelerate. This data can then be sold off to a data broker or directly to an insurance company, where it’s used to calculate a driver’s riskiness, and adjust insurance rates accordingly. This surveillance is often defended by its promoters as a way to get discounts on insurance, but that rarely addresses the fact your insurance rates may actually go up.

If your car is connected to the internet or has an app, you may have inadvertently “agreed” to this type of data sharing when setting it up without realizing it. The Senators’ letter asserts that Hyundai shares drivers’ data  without seeking their informed consent, and that GM and Honda used deceptive practices during signup.

When it comes to the price that companies can get for selling your driving data, the numbers range wildly, but the data isn’t as valuable as you might imagine. The letter states that Honda sold the data on about 97,000 cars to an analytics company, Verisk—which turned around and sold the data to insurance companies—for $25,920, or 26 cents per car. Hyundai got a better deal, but still not astronomical numbers: Verisk paid Hyundai $1,043,315.69, or 61 cents per car. GM declined to share details about its sales.

The letter also reveals that while GM stopped sharing driving data after The New York Times’ investigation, it did not stop sharing locat

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