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

Normal Motors has reached a privacy-related settlement with a gaggle of regulation enforcement companies 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 prospects’ driving habits with insurance coverage firms, and that some prospects have been involved that their insurance coverage charges had gone up because of this.

The settlement announcement from Bonta’s workplace equally alleges that GM offered “the names, contact data, geolocation information, and driving habits information of a whole lot of hundreds of Californians” to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Danger Options, that are each information brokers.  Bonta’s workplace additional alleges that this information was collected by means of GM’s OnStar program, and that the corporate made roughly $20 million from information gross sales.

Nevertheless, Bonta’s workplace additionally stated the information didn’t result in elevated insurance coverage costs in California, “possible as a result of underneath California’s insurance coverage legal guidelines, insurers are prohibited from utilizing driving information 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 information to any shopper reporting companies for 5 years, Bonta’s workplace stated. GM has additionally agreed to delete any driver information that it nonetheless retains inside 180 days (until it obtains consent from prospects), and to request that Lexis and Verisk delete that information.

“Normal Motors offered the information of California drivers with out their information or consent and regardless of quite a few statements reassuring drivers that it will not accomplish that,” Bonta stated in a press release, including that the settlement “requires Normal Motors to desert these unlawful practices and underscores the significance of the information minimization in California’s privateness regulation — firms can’t simply maintain on to information and use it later for an additional goal.”

GM had beforehand settled with the Federal Commerce Fee over its information gross sales, with a last order banning Normal Motors and OnStar from promoting sure information with shopper reporting companies.

GM informed Reuters that the settlement “addresses Good Driver, a product we discontinued in 2024, and reinforces steps we’ve taken to strengthen our privateness practices.”