GM being sued for unlawfully collecting customers’ personal driving data

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing General Motors (GM) for its false, deceptive, and misleading business practices.

In June Paxton announced he would launch an investigation into several car manufacturers over how they handled the data that was collected by connected cars.

“The technology in modern vehicles enables manufacturers to collect millions of data points about the people driving them. Reports of the invasive and unmitigated collection and sale of data without consumer consent are disturbing, and they merit a thorough investigation and appropriate enforcement,” Paxton said in a statement back then.

GM collected and sold private information of 1.5 million Texans to insurance companies, without their knowledge or consent. That’s all the reason the Texas Attorney General needs to take a shot at the shady privacy policy of the car manufacturer.

GM collected, recorded, analyzed, and transmitted detailed driving information each time a motorist would get behind the wheel and translated the findings into so-called ‘Driving Scores’. These scores were then sold to insurance companies as part of its ‘onboarding process’. General Motors said that failing to enroll would result in the deactivation of their vehicle’s safety features. GM never informed its customers about the systematic collection and sale of their driving data.

Paxton claims that the American automotive company is involved in ‘egregious business practices’ that violate Texans’ privacy and Texas law.

“We will hold them accountable. Companies are using invasive technology to violate the rights of our citizens in unthinkable ways. Millions of American drivers wanted to buy a car, not a comprehensive surveillance system that unlawfully records information about every drive they take and sells their data to any company willing to pay for it,” he proclaims in a public testimony.

“We’ve been in discussions with the Attorney General’s office and are reviewing the complaint. We share the desire to protect consumers’ privacy,” GM said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

According to Paxton, GM has been using data collection technology since 2015. It has been installed in over 14 million vehicles since then.