Zero Hedge-
The state of Texas has sued Allstate and a subsidiary, Arity, accusing the insurance giant of illegally tracking drivers through cell phone apps without their consent and then using the data to charge more for car insurance.
According to Texas AG Ken Paxton, Allstate created the “world’s largest driving behavior database,” which collected information on more than 45 million Americans after paying mobile app developers millions of dollars to secretly incorporate tracking software. The software was designed beginning in 2015 by Allstate’s data analytics unit, Arity, and integrated into several apps such as Fuel Rewards, GasBuddy, Life360 and Allstate-owned Routely.
In a Monday complaint filed in a Texas state court near Houston, Texas says Allstate also profited by selling the data to other insurers. more
There’s a reason all those apps are free.
Ugly, very ugly. You know that the first customer was Homeland Security.
Gives a different slant on the meaning of AllSTATE.
I signed up with Allstate in July after being with American Family for 28 years. Their rates just got too high. My daughter put their app on my phone (I’m 74 and have no clue how to do it) and they wanted me to sign up for something that tracks your trips ostensibly to lower your rate for safe driving.Wife and I are both handicapped and rarely drive 20 miles a week, but I didn’t get that thing because I suspected it was just a way to spy on where people were going.My rates with Allstate are less than 1/2 what American Family was charging me for the same coverage.
state farm, farmers, progressive, etc. they’d all like to give you an information-colonoscopy without you knowing. no problem.
My insurance tried that crap om me but cancelled it when they figured out I was piloting my plane not driving my car. Deleted the app and shortly afterwards I changed insurance.
off topic: the pedocrats & rino-traitors elected their new sphincter-oth, another straus/bonnen/phelan clone. they like to suck pedocrat dick & swallow.
I bought a new Genesis last March. Love the car, but I am well aware that it knows the speed limit of the street I am going down – which means it knows exactly where I am, how fast I am driving. I don’t adjust my driving habits at all because of it, but I certainly know that if Big Brother wants to watch, the system is already in place.
Left Coast Dan
Tuesday, 14 January 2025, 16:49 at 4:49 pm
“I bought a new Genesis last March. Love the car, but I am well aware that it knows the speed limit of the street I am going down – which means it knows exactly where I am, how fast I am driving. ”
…my KIA navigation system does that too even when Im not using it, shows me the street Im on and a speed limit for it.
Besides being creepy, Ive noticed something else about it.
The speed limits displayed are not always right, and can be wrong in BOTH directions.
So if someone’s using to to cull driver behavior data, they are getting incorrect data.
…GIGO is still very much a thing, then…
Feb 16 Google and Utoob start fingerprinting everyone’s devices so they will know who you are, what you buy, where you go and expose you to hackers. This is spying on a massive scale. People will poopoo me but remember the Patriot Act?
I changed health insurance companies last fall and the new one sends never ending surveys that I see as invasive. Then when I fill them out without allot of detail. They try and call me with “follow up questions”. But I don’t answer the phone, I let them leave messages and I only call them back if I feel like it and I never feel like it. Then they want to send their representative for a home visit. Nope I don’t want strangers or anyone in my house to quiz me. BS snoops
Dumb Bunnies – That reminds me of a funny story about my GPS about 10 years ago.
I was driving West in my Jeep on a surface street at about 40MPH when I looked the GPS. It showed me that I was traveling North at a higher speed. Obviously it took a hike in the woods, so I just kept watching it to see if it would self-correct at some point. It didn’t so I pulled into a parking lot and just watched it keep on going. I finally re-booted it when it indicated that I was over lake Erie half way to Canada going about 260MPH, but not before I took a picture of it!
Imagine an insurance company seeing that today!!
I still get a kick out of looking at it every now and then 🙂
We have a 2009 Suburban that we bought in 2022. It has a GPS that I can’t figure our for the life of me. Whenever I first start it up, it shows me in Washington DC. I have switched the area, but it keeps going back. After a couple of miles it shows me where I am. Must be related to the fact that my clock is always an hour fast during standard time. It is not that I am too lazy to change it; I have OCD when it comes to keeping clocks set. But if I shut it off, it is back to Eastern Standard time. It’s not that it goes to Central Daylight Saving Time in the summer — it just stays on Eastern Standard time which is the same thing. I even changed it to a 24 hour clock but that, too, reset when I shut it off. At least OnStar can’t track me because OnStar no longer supports 2.4 G.
I have been seeing ads about how to pay something like 1/10th for car insurance. I took a quick peek. From what I gather, you agree to put a microscope on your vehicle.