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

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

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

The settlement announcement from Bonta’s workplace equally alleges that GM offered “the names, contact info, geolocation knowledge, and driving habits knowledge of a whole bunch of 1000’s of Californians” to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Threat Options, that are each knowledge brokers.  Bonta’s workplace additional alleges that this knowledge was collected by means of 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, “seemingly 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 businesses for 5 years, Bonta’s workplace mentioned. GM has additionally agreed to delete any driver knowledge that it nonetheless retains inside 180 days (except it obtains consent from clients), and to request that Lexis and Verisk delete that knowledge.

“Normal Motors offered the info of California drivers with out their data or consent and regardless of quite a few statements reassuring drivers that it might not achieve this,” Bonta mentioned in an announcement, including that the settlement “requires Normal 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 function.”

GM had previously settled with the Federal Trade Commission over its knowledge gross sales, with a closing order banning Normal Motors and OnStar from promoting sure knowledge with client reporting businesses.

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.”