The FTC’s Ban on GM and OnStar Selling Driver Data Is a Good First Step

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The Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement agreeing that General Motors and its subsidiary, OnStar, will be banned from selling geolocation and driver behavior data to credit agencies for five years. That’s good news for G.M. owners. Every car owner and driver deserves to be protected.

Last year, a New York Times investigation highlighted how G.M. was sharing information with insurance companies without clear knowledge from the driver. This resulted in people’s insurance premiums increasing, sometimes without them realizing why that was happening. This data sharing problem was common amongst many carmakers, not just G.M., but figuring out what your car was sharing was often a Sisyphean task, somehow managing to be more complicated than trying to learn similar details about apps or websites.

The FTC complaint zeroed in on how G.M. enrolled people in its OnStar connected vehicle service with a misleading process. OnStar was initially designed to help drivers in an emergency, but over time the service collected and shared more data that had nothing to do with emergency services. The result was people signing up for the service without realizing they were agreeing to share their location and driver behavior data with third parties, including insurance companies and consumer reporting agencies. The FTC also alleged that G.M. didn’t disclose who the data was shared with (insurance companies) and for what purposes (to deny or set rates). Asking car

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