LexisNexis, which generates consumer risk profiles for the insurers, knew about every trip G.M. drivers had taken in their cars, including when they sped, braked too hard or accelerated rapidly.

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

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

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 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. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

  • AliasAKA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    We need to start poisoning this data. I don’t think the solution is to cut the wires, I think it’s to send bogus data. Just make it so that no matter how I drive, the data is always overwritten that I traveled 5 miles at 30mph average with no hard stops and no hard accelerations. I only ever make that trip. Wanna base my insurance off that? Go for it.

    Anyways I like the technical ability to do this, but wonder if some enterprising person could hack the obd to constantly overwrite the data here.

    Again I want to poison this data. It should be illegal, but it’s not. Companies will charge me more if I block it. So the solution is data poisoning imo.

    Incidentally we need to be poisoning ALL data brokers and collectors for these types of things.

    • tal@kbin.social
      0·
      6 months ago

      It might be nice if auto reviewers included a “privacy rating” for a vehicle based OK whether it broadcasts anything via radio (e.g. cell or tire-pressure systems can be used to identify someone). It’s not just auto manufacturers, but anyone who wants to set up a radio monitoring network, if there are unique IDs being broadcast.

      I don’t know how a reviewer could know whether there’s a way for a manufacturer to gather logs during maintenance.

    • Lemmyfunbun@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      6 months ago

      i think we should also flood them with so much data it cant keep upnandevendecipher what is really anymore. Same for computer habits. Flood it with random data.

  • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
    0·
    6 months ago

    I work in fintech and I had glimpses of raw API data that credit agencies, Mastercard and LexisNexis provide (among others). It’s crazy detailed. Even just our query increases the query count by one and provides at least ten data points on the why and when.

    I’m not surprised that the car manufacturers are selling this data to LexisNexis who in turn sell it to insurance companies.

      • JustUseMint@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        The issue is the cellular modem built into most cars nowadays. It can vary in difficulty to disable or remove, with the added bonus of potentially taking other services that are attached to it such as Bluetooth. It fucking sucks. I don’t know more details than that.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        On some vehicles, you can apparently disable it.

        Here’s what one guy found works on a 2023 Corolla, where it’s getting increasingly-more-of-a-pain-in-the-ass than in earlier models:

        https://www.bitchute.com/video/epzioGDOdTeo/

        Apparently, it used to be possible to just pull a fuse out of the fuse panel in prior years.

        I’d also add that I don’t know for sure what the impact is. I’d imagine that it voids your warranty. I don’t know if the car manufacturer relies on this communication mechanism to push out firmware updates for the car, but if so, I suppose that one might not get firmware updates.

        Apparently some older Hyundais disable themselves, because they can’t speak newer cell phone protocols, and those older cell towers are going offline, which causes the connectivity to be severed.

        https://owners.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/resources/blue-link/2g-3g-wireless-service-update

  • HubertManne@kbin.social
    0·
    6 months ago

    meanwhile I have to pre fill out some forms so the sherrif office can track it if its stolen. It cracks me up how the government getting things is a big deal but corpos then no worries.

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    0·
    6 months ago

    Not at all surprised by this. I sold my car a decade ago, I just hope motorcycles can stay dumb for longer.

  • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
    0·
    6 months ago

    I still have my 2010 Mazda 3. The only tech it has is Bluetooth connectivity for phone and music and some voice commands for calls.

    The day I will change cars will be the day my car completely dies and there’s nothing I can do about it, or it becomes illegal to drive, or it gets wrecked in an accident.

    I don’t ever want the new cars. I hate hate hate the stupid touch tablets they’ve put to control everything instead of physical knobs, and now this fucking crap where your car spies on you and rats you out to you insurance company.

    • Mike D.@lemm.ee
      0·
      6 months ago

      Agreed.

      I now need to root my Android and put a new OS so it stops telling Google where I am. I’m slightly afraid as I just want my phone to work when I need it.

      I’m sure T-Mobile uses my location data for something too.

      • Sabata11792@kbin.social
        0·
        6 months ago

        Everyone calls me paranoid for even just giving a shit about being spied on. Am I supposed to enjoy getting reamed by the rich?

        • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          6 months ago

          Double Cab 4.7L SR5 (honestly no idea what SR5 even means) 8ft Bed. Bought used in 2011. Only 92k miles so far. Drove it from Philly to Anchorage and lived in Alaska for 3 years. Currently in Massachusetts. Respect.

          • dmtalon@infosec.pub
            0·
            6 months ago

            Mine has like 165k. First vehicle I bought myself new. SR5 is just the middle package. They had the low trim as no named, SR5 then limited.

            I got mine from Jim Barkley (brand new). Six hour drive. I drove down there in a 1999 Chevy S10 ZR-2 and traded it in and bought the Tundra. I was there like 30-45 min and I financed it with them. Jim Barkley is gone now, but that was such a pleasurable experience for a car buying experience.

            Still love this truck!

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
      0·
      6 months ago

      Later model 3 but definitely lower-tech (has the touchscreen nonsense but no internet or anything) and I plan on running it as long as possible lol

      • Patches@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        6 months ago

        I don’t know how to tell you but just because the Car can phone home with cellular - doesn’t mean you will see it as a free Internet Browser.

        • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
          0·
          6 months ago

          I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying tbh.

          Anyway I don’t use their GPS and I don’t let it sync contacts or other info. I Bluetooth and run music off the phone locally or my Plex server. It’s from 2016 so I’m fairly certain it doesn’t have the same data back and forth you’re seeing in more current cars. I know it doesn’t collect audio, driving patterns, etc. which is what these new systems are all doing with wild TOS’s you have to agree to, as Mozilla showed us a few months ago.

          The dumb infotainment center or whatever has been spotty so I’ve actually been using the aux more lately.

          Point is whatever data it’s collecting and sending, which I’m not even entirely sure is happening in any meaningful way especially the way I use it, is not really at the same level we are seeing today.

            • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
              0·
              6 months ago

              Not that I know of no. For instance, to activate their navigation, you need to buy a $200 SD card. You can’t do anything remotely AFAIK with this car. Even “apps” for listening require them to be installed on your phone so it’s not doing it on its own, it’s using your phone and app and data to make it happen. Without your smartphone it the “infotainment” center is just an info center with FM/AM radio.

              I don’t think any of that stuff started until the Mazda Connect app or whatever it’s called. A decade ago (my car is like 8 years old now) a lot of cars were in the “blackberry” phase where it’s not really browsing the internet and everyone was sort of testing new stuff. Now car manufacturers have a lot more sense of how valuable all that data is and they’ve “figured it out,” much to our collective chagrin.

  • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
    0·
    6 months ago

    Moving from 64 to 65 also moves you from a different age bracket, I would guess that this is the main reason he saw a general rise on his insurance cost from all the other insurance companies.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        6 months ago

        I disagree, they’re effective and a reasonably privacy-friendly way of predicting risk. Younger people are generally more aggressive drivers than older people, and older people generally have worse reactions than younger people. It’s one of the strongest indicators for driving behavior before an infraction is recorded.

        I don’t like it either, but it’s better imo than using one of those driving meters.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
          0·
          6 months ago

          So I’m not against using age, but binning it coarsely is the issue when it can be handled much more granularly.

          64-65 is probably a negligible amount of risk increase, but 64-69 is going to be much bigger. Looking at younger ages the effect is more extreme where they’re probably charging late 20’s drivers more because they’re pooled with low 20’s.

          Anyway, on average it probably works out the same, but in practice I never bin data where I can avoid it, since you get better information looking at it as a continuous range.

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
        0·
        6 months ago

        I think they totally have the computer power to use an hyper parametric model with each age as own variable. A problem this could had, is that they are not going to be enough older adults to accurately assess the risk of them and the model could end showing that 80yo’s are better drivers than 30yo’s.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
          0·
          6 months ago

          You can use regression splines or lowess to locally weight the areas with low data based on what you do know, it keeps your parameter count down but still performs well even at the tails.

  • doricub@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    We don’t have to worry about the government tracking us everywhere we go. These corporations will do it for them and then sell the data for a proft.

  • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    Comprehensive privacy law time? Nahh just ban the Chinese EVs and pretend this doesn’t happen. Same thing as tiktok. You’ll never be protected as long as they can point to the Chinese boogyman.

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      0·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, I feel like that’s why the EU has such strong privacy regulations. Tech giants in our market are mostly either state-tolerated&-utilized monopolies from the US or state-owned monopolies from China.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      There’s also the potential that raising concerns of Chinese spyware raises more concern of the rest of it. They should continue raising those concerns about them all. And ban all the spyware.