Kashmir Hill (who wrote the essential Your Face Belongs to Us) has a barnburner in the NYT today: How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me). (Gift link)
It follows up on her reporting from earlier this year about GM sharing data with insurance companies without the car owner’s knowledge. This resulted in massive insurance premium increases for the drivers.
Turns out she was enrolled as well, and it certainly wasn’t a small oversight:
…in April, when we found out our driving had been tracked, my husband signed into a browser-based version of his account page, on GM.com, which said our car was enrolled in “OnStar Smart Driver+.” G.M. says this discrepancy between the app and the website was the result of “a bug” that affected a “small population” of customers. That group got the worst possible version of Smart Driver: We couldn’t get insights into our driving, but insurance companies could.
Yikes. The piece is worth reading in full – she talks to former GM employees, UX experts and dealership staff about how it happens. This part shocked me:
I called our dealership, a franchise of General Motors, and talked to the salesman who had sold us the car. He confirmed that he had enrolled us for OnStar, noting that his pay is docked if he fails to do so. He said that was a mandate from G.M., which sends the dealership a report card each month tracking the percentage of sign-ups.
I’m sure GM isn’t alone in this behaviour. I’m suddenly happier about my 6 year old Ford with its crappy Bluetooth. I’m no fan of Tesla, but the outdated car dealership model has to go.
It doesn’t stop there either:
…more than eight million vehicles were “opted in” to Smart Driver at that time, described a new version of the program called “Smart Driver 2.0.” This version tracked hard cornering, forward collision alerts, lane-departure warnings and seatbelt reminders…
Unbelievable. Read the whole article, I just scratched the surface.
And buy her book, it’s one of my favourite recent tech books and reads like a thriller.