Automakers Track, and Share, Data on Drivers

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, Washington, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New Yorkbased global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally tracked car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per U.S. law. What it contained stunned him: over 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven, and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations.

According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors — the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score “for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage,” according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month.

In recent years, insurance companies have offered incentives to install dongles in cars or download apps that monitor driving. But “drivers are historically reluctant to participate in these programs,” as Ford Motor put it in a patent application that describes what is happening instead: Car companies are collecting information from vehicles.

Car companies have established relationships with insurance companies, so that if drivers want to sign up for what is called usage-based insurance — where rates are set based on monitoring of their driving habits — it is easy to collect that data wirelessly from their cars.

But in other instances, something sneakier has happened. Automakers have started offering features in their apps that rate people’s driving. If drivers turn these on, the companies give information about how they drive to data brokers.

Automakers and data brokers that collect data say they have permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read.

“GM’s OnStar Smart Driver service is optional to customers,” a G.M. spokeswoman, Malorie Lucich, said. “Customer benefits include learning more about their safe driving behaviors or vehicle performance that, with their consent, may be used to obtain insurance quotes.”

But days after The New York Times reported on the practice, and after the filing of a lawsuit in Florida, Ms. Lucich said that G.M. had stopped sharing details with LexisNexis and another data broker, Verisk. “Customer trust is a priority for us, and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies,” she said.

Romeo Chicco, a Cadillac driver in Florida, said he was denied insurance by seven companies in December. When he asked an agent why, she advised him to pull his LexisNexis report. He discovered six months of his driving activity, including instances of hard braking and hard accelerating, as well as speeding. When he finally obtained insurance, it was double what he had previously paid.

Mr. Chicco and Mr. Dahl had been enrolled in OnStar Smart Driver. OnStar is G.M.’s Internet-connected service for its cars and Smart Driver is a free, gamified feature. It is not the only automaker sharing driving behavior. Kia, Subaru and Mitsubishi also contribute to the LexisNexis “Telematics Exchange.” Verisk has partnerships with Ford, Honda and Hyundai.

Subaru shares odometer data with LexisNexis for customers who turn on Starlink and authorize that data be shared “when shopping for auto insurance,” said a spokesman, Dominick Infante. Alan Hall, a Ford spokesman, said the company will share driving behavior from a car directly with an insurance company only when a customer gives explicit consent via an in-vehicle touch screen.

The other automakers all have optional driver-coaching features in their apps that, when turned on, collect information that is then shared with LexisNexis or Verisk. But that would not be obvious to drivers using these features. Drivers who have realized what is happening are not happy.

In a lawsuit filed this month, Mr. Chicco accused General Motors and LexisNexis Risk Solutions of violating privacy and consumer protection laws.

He said he would never buy another car from G.M. He is planning to sell his Cadillac.

Insurers buy reports about potential customers’ behavior.