Your car snitched to your insurer: GM pays $220M for spying on drivers

General Motors will pay $220 million to settle claims from 36 US attorneys general. The states accused the carmaker of selling drivers' behavior and location data to data brokers, who then resold it to insurance companies.

It all revolves around Smart Driver, a program GM enrolled millions of drivers in between 2016 and 2024. The car logged how often someone drove, when each trip started and ended, how often they braked or accelerated hard, and whether they went over the speed limit. Drivers were told it would help them drive more safely and that their data would not reach insurers without express consent. According to the states, GM sold it anyway, under contracts that explicitly named insurance products as the use. Insurers then adjusted rates, sometimes raising them.

The details are the ugly part. Most people were signed up at the dealership along with OnStar, and prosecutors say sales staff often accepted the terms on the buyer's behalf, since they earned bonuses based on enrollments. The OnStar app wrongly told more than 370,000 drivers they were not enrolled, while their data was being collected and sold. In total, over 10 million Americans were affected. GM shut the program down in 2024 after reporters exposed the scheme.

Now GM must get drivers' affirmative consent before collecting or sharing driving and location data, collect less of it, run a full privacy program with internal and external audits, and make sure dealerships stop enrolling people quietly. It is not GM's first bill for this: a few months ago it paid $12.75 million over similar claims in California.

Verdict: your car has long known more about you than your insurance agent, and it turns out it was happy to share.