Ind. AG Sues General Motors for Collection, Sale of Geolocation Data
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) sued General Motors (GM) and its subsidiary OnStar for collecting and selling Indiana drivers’ personal data to third parties without their consent, including insurance companies, violating the company's own Consumer Privacy Protection Principles as well as the state consumer protection laws, Rokita announced Thursday.
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“Everyone deserves transparency and honesty from the companies they do business with, especially when it comes to having their data protected,” Rokita said. “General Motors and OnStar turned a supposed safety feature into a way to make money, profiting off Indiana drivers without their knowledge." He added, “Hoosiers were secretly misled and used."
The lawsuit, filed in the Marion Superior Court in Indiana on March 19, said that GM and OnStar misrepresented a telematics system as a safety feature, while in reality it was used to collect the location data and detailed driving data of customers. The data was then sold to data brokers, who used the information to create risk profiles of drivers, which were then sold to insurance companies, the complaint said.
"Far from the consumer benefits touted, Defendants have used, and continue to use, the vehicles’ telematics system as a cash cow by surreptitiously selling consumers’ driving behavior and geolocation to third-party data brokers and insurance companies, who then use the information to penalize drivers," Rokita said in the lawsuit. "In short, Defendants profited from its data mining and data sharing activities to the detriment of the very customers to whom their telematics technology and associated programs were advertised to help."
The Arkansas AG also sued GM and OnStar in February (see 2502260044). Texas sued the company last year (see 2501160029), also for the unlawful collection and sale of geolocation data.