alt.hn

1/17/2025 at 1:52:48 PM

GM parks claims driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums

 https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/17/gm_settles_ftc_charges/

by pseudolus

1/17/2025 at 2:28:53 PM

Wait, they were sending geo location data to LexusNexus?! That is crazy. If you haven't seen the inside of LexusNexus, it is a stalkers paradise. I got a glimpse when I talked to some guys about helping them with some python automation. Turned out they use LexusNexus to figure out who to buy mineral rights from for fracking nat gas. They gloated how they used deep personal data to do thing like play spouses against each other as they are going through a divorce. I walked away because of basic human values and ethics I feel need to be upheld

by verdverm

1/17/2025 at 2:58:30 PM

LexisNexis owns an app now being rolled out widely by homeowners insurers, named Flyreel. These insurers require its use, and it basically is 4K footage of your property and home interior. I needed to do this due to our insurer leaving the East Coast, it was incredibly invasive and I am still mad about it.

Talk about stalkers paradise!

  > advanced property survey solution that provides a breadth of actionable data from the ground, the interior and the sky, then applies AI-driven insights to help U.S. insurance carriers identify, retain and acquire profitable risks – all without having to send someone on site for a physical property inspection.
https://risk.lexisnexis.com/products/flyreel

by threecheese

1/17/2025 at 3:01:33 PM

they tell they need its use, but they do not tell about not having visuals obstructed by a black tape /s

by amarcheschi

1/17/2025 at 3:18:24 PM

Fyi everyone can request a copy of their nexislexis report. It may cost a few dollars.

Depending on the amount of information, you'll received a report that can be several hundred pages.

It's crazy how much data they have on most people.

by chneu

1/17/2025 at 2:56:09 PM

What the fuck? Is it even legal to access personal datas as deep as the ones you might use to tickle others during a divorce?

edit: this applies only to us (i'm european so i can't ask for my data but i am curios about it): you can request to access the data they have about you here https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request

if you click on online form instructions they tell you how to correct infos about you as well

by amarcheschi

1/17/2025 at 7:45:25 PM

I wonder if they keep track of if someone has requested their info from them or not and how they use that to rate that persons risk if they do (does it raise or lower their score?)...

by jrs235

1/17/2025 at 3:28:12 PM

Back when I was a wee sysadmin helping start a MSP, we had lots of law firms, and I can confirm, despite claims of checks on this, the privacy invading things I saw them do!

Supposedly the checks have actually gotten better, but I'm skeptical.

by arminiusreturns

1/17/2025 at 2:25:24 PM

I am having trouble making sense the word "parks" in the title. Is "GM parks" an entity, or is this a mistake and "parks" is just an extra verb in there?

by pitaj

1/17/2025 at 2:30:08 PM

It’s a verb, to park, as in to put something in a particular place and leave it there. Here, it means that they’ve settled the claims, promised to behave in the future, and they’re moving on. It is very awkward and seems impossible to understand without reading more. Maybe it makes more sense to the British.

by wat10000

1/17/2025 at 2:32:49 PM

It does not make more sense to the British, this is just the particular "clever" writing style favoured by The Register. Maybe it was sharp in the 2000s, I can't honestly remember, but these days it makes the site pretty much unreadable for me.

by gnfargbl

1/17/2025 at 2:37:05 PM

It's a poor choice of words considering GM makes cars, yes in other contexts I would read "parks" as "shelves" or "puts on hold" but even with your explanatory note it took me a couple of reads to figure out what the title actually means

by mathieuh

1/17/2025 at 3:00:23 PM

I assume they chose it exactly because GM makes cars. El Reg likes being clever even to the detriment of clarity.

by wat10000

1/17/2025 at 2:30:25 PM

I think that "addresses" would be a better word there? I guess they were going for a pun, but it didn't land for me either.

by neallindsay

1/17/2025 at 2:27:58 PM

They are using "parks" to mean "settles"

by avvt4avaw

1/17/2025 at 2:32:09 PM

Yea, trying to be funny with target specific references, only to construct a difficult to parse sentence. It's like saying a certain politician would love to couch a certain meme

by verdverm

1/17/2025 at 3:25:05 PM

at least that pun makes sense. in this context, "park", as I understand it, means to temporarily put something aside, generally something you have control of, like "let's park that idea and move onto ...", not like claims adversaries are making.

by permo-w

1/17/2025 at 2:32:42 PM

same, absolutely terrible choice of a verb for the headline

by thousand_nights

1/17/2025 at 2:47:34 PM

It's a pun. As in, "parks a car."

by bityard

1/17/2025 at 2:28:36 PM

It's how the register rolls.

What they mean is, they parked it, like a car, put a stop to, ceased movement.

by alias_neo

1/17/2025 at 2:50:09 PM

I was also wondering which parks GM owned, and thought "claims" was a verb.

by userbinator

1/17/2025 at 2:52:58 PM

So basically if I get out of the store not paying I'm going to jail, but big companies when doing crime, they promise they will behave for five years, and then go on, but more openly? And what about people who were victims?

by p0w3n3d

1/17/2025 at 3:27:50 PM

not just big companies. Limited liability is a powerful thing

by permo-w

1/17/2025 at 5:26:13 PM

That's not what limited liability is. The point of limited liability is that the investors aren't responsible for the debt if the company goes bankrupt.

What is happening here is impunity.

by throwaway48476

1/17/2025 at 5:52:20 PM

limited liability is the concept that a business is an entity with its own legal status separate from the people that run and own it. it extends beyond debt

by permo-w

1/17/2025 at 2:37:23 PM

What about all those people whose data was sent to LexusNexus illegally?

Will that get removed? Because those people's rates are affected.

by OptionOfT

1/17/2025 at 3:32:53 PM

"Toyota vehicles could “Alert local authorities if a license plate or other vehicle identifier associated with a suspected vehicle is identified” AKA “Amber Alert Assistance” at first, but later?" https://x.com/SteveMoser/status/1675876541845188611

by smoser

1/17/2025 at 4:16:34 PM

> "Respecting our customers’ privacy and earning their trust is deeply important to us," the car maker claimed in a statement Thursday. "Although Smart Driver was created to promote safer driving behavior, we ended that program due to customer feedback."

The stretch and spin on this is pretty insane. I guess it's true if you're forced to do it by a client who you come to care about because they're the federal government and they've named, shamed, and sued you. Yet another reason to continue to avoid American made cars.

by not_your_mentat

1/17/2025 at 2:41:42 PM

Setting aside all privacy issues entirely, I'm curious as to the details of the internal approval process (or perhaps lack of process) in GM.

The act itself is obviously customer-hostile, and it's at least fairly obvious that at some point you'll get caught out. So why risk it? It could be a rogue executive, but it could also be that consumers are known to care so little about things like this that the blowback is factorable as a cost of doing business, like the apocryphal Ford fuel tank story. I wonder which is the reality.

by gnfargbl

1/17/2025 at 2:56:07 PM

Sociopaths are rife in the management levels of most companies. They don't see anything wrong in pushing ethical boundaries they don't hold themselves to.

by kevin_thibedeau

1/17/2025 at 9:23:59 PM

Well, not just management. Some individual contributor(s) developed the processes and software to implement this, too. Just like there are plenty of execs who think "makes money -> I have no problem with it" without considering ethics, there are plenty of engineers who think "interesting problem -> I'll do it" without considering ethics.

by ryandrake

1/17/2025 at 3:27:35 PM

Oh sure, but larger companies are aware of this and usually have systems in place to protect themselves. I would love to know the backstory around this decision.

by gnfargbl

1/17/2025 at 3:02:27 PM

It needs to be opt-in, not opt-out. Opt-out assumes consumer knowledge of the option, which has been repeatedly proven an unrealistic expectation.

by Kelvin506

1/17/2025 at 2:20:53 PM

If it has a computer it's recording your data. If it has an internet connection it's sending your data.

Stop buying 'smart' things.

by throwaway48476

1/17/2025 at 2:32:56 PM

It's a tough spot to be in as nearly all modern vehicles are doing this now. There isn't a free market alternative that I know of outside of building your own kit car

by 7thaccount

1/17/2025 at 2:43:08 PM

My 2024 Mazda CX-90 has a "Mazda Connected Services" feature which uses cellular networks and allows me to remotely control and locate the car. It's a subscription service that comes free for the first 3 years, after which I probably won't be subscribing.

by bpoyner

1/17/2025 at 2:53:43 PM

It will probably continue to send location information, vehicle speeds, and telemetry data back to Mazda even after you let the subscription lapse. We know GM and other car makers do this, so it's safest to assume they all do.

by bityard

1/17/2025 at 3:16:17 PM

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure you're correct. This is just how things are now. You could probably break the antenna (whoopsie daisies).

by bpoyner

1/17/2025 at 3:34:08 PM

I doubt it. They've integrated these things so thoroughly now right?

by 7thaccount

1/17/2025 at 5:56:07 PM

I use an airtag to find my street-parked 2014 Prius. Super happy with this solution.

by etrautmann

1/17/2025 at 2:51:30 PM

I wonder if there's a business opportunity hiding in there for somebody to mod away the tracking from new cars.

On my end, I've never bought a car with that crap in it, and I've never purchased from a dealer who also sells new cars. I shouldn't have any trouble keeping my car nice for another 30yrs, probably replacing the engine and transmission once ($3-4k/ea in today's dollars if I shop around). Hopefully other free-market alternatives exist by then.

by hansvm

1/17/2025 at 3:32:07 PM

this is a big deal here on hacker news, but for it to be a viable business opportunity, especially at the kind of price point it would require - i.e. hundreds of dollars - you'd need the general public to care, and in my experience they don't.

by permo-w

1/17/2025 at 2:59:20 PM

Ford does have explicit settings to disable all connectivity. If it turns out they're lying, there is a massive class action in their future.

by kevin_thibedeau

1/17/2025 at 2:38:31 PM

Dacia, with their 'essential' module, should do the trick.

by orwin

1/17/2025 at 2:40:23 PM

Just buy a used car. Something like Mercury Grand Marquis will run indefinitely and doesn't collect your data.

by ArtemZ

1/17/2025 at 2:57:27 PM

Here in the salt belt, our cars rust to the point of being unsafe after about a decade, maybe 15 years if you treat them right. You can't really buy a car much older than that in good shape even if you wanted to. We are soon hitting the point that ALL used cars will have phone-home features unless they are explicitly removed by a sufficiently clueful owner.

by bityard

1/17/2025 at 2:45:08 PM

The upkeep on them eventually gets pretty high (if you're not a DIY mechanic) and it's a good deal security wise, but bad deal financially.

by 7thaccount

1/17/2025 at 3:22:51 PM

I ran these numbers for a number of brands and models (over a decade ago, so the data's stale, but reliability has largely improved since then, while gas mileage has largely stagnated except in trucks), and it's not as bad as you'd think. Some highlights:

1. Incremental costs like tires/oil/gas/insurance matter a lot more than the purchase price and repairs. That has some knock-on impacts:

  a. Most people on HN can easily afford to not carry full coverage if they drive something like a 2012 Civic. If the thing is totalled and not covered by the other party, just buy another. If you purchase with a loan or buy a more expensive car then even a lot of developers in their first few years (the majority of developers IIRC) can't afford that luxury and have to purchase full coverage -- paying for the same risk they'd assume by not having full coverage, plus the insurance company's profits.

  b. The first 5-10 years of a car's life are expensive not just because of depreciation, insurance, and financial instruments but also because of a lack of cheap replacement parts and requirements for things like specific kinds of oil without good third-party substitutes.

  c. Gas mileage (or equivalent electric costs, based on how you'll actually charge the thing in real life) was the driving factor behind the sweet spot being closer to 8-14 year old cars rather than even older cars (you don't have much significant amortized repair cost till at least a 20yr old car).

  d. You can save almost as much money adopting relaxed, safe driving habits as you can optimizing the purchase year. Instead of hitting the gas right up until the car in front of you at a red light and then hitting your brakes, try coasting in. If there's nobody at the light and you'll definitely have to stop before it turns, slow down early and coast toward it rather than slowing down at the end (so that you can maintain 10-20mph of kinetic energy as the light turns green rather than coming to a complete stop). If you're driving somewhere with a lot of stop signs, it's probably residential and shouldn't be driven in quickly anyway, but lower your top speed to the actual speed limit (25 vs 30mph with frequent stops saves 30% on your incremental gas mileage).
2. The first few years of ownership are much more expensive than even years 18, 19, 20. Depreciation hits like a truck.

3. If you lease or take out anything like a 3yr+ loan, the extra cost of that financial instrument more than makes up for the extra repairs even out to a 30yr old car.

4. The sweet-spot in cost-per-year (keeping in mind that with transaction costs you can't save money switching to an optimally aged car every year) was in the 8-14yr range, depending on a lot of factors. Since gas mileage has not significantly improved since I ran these numbers, and since cars are more reliable, I expect the cheapest cars to own to be much older than that (probably 15-20yrs, but that's just a hunch). Electric cars throw a potential wrench in things, but whether those are actually cheaper is a lot more sensitive to your personal situation than with gas cars, so I won't touch on it.

5. Repairs on old cars are much more expensive when you put them off. Hear a knocking as you turn while driving? Have the mechanic replace a bushing or whatever. Haven't replaced anything for 2yrs? Have the mechanic inspect all your various bushings/housings/... during your normal oil change (mechanics tend to be cheaper and better than all those quick-oil-change places by the way). Getting towed to a mechanic and having to rent a car, skip work, uber, or mooch off a friend is expensive. Addressing problems proactively is cheaper than newish-car depreciation out to at least 30yrs -- even counting a (stochastic) engine or transmission replacement somewhere in that interval.

Cost of ownership depends on a lot of factors. The broad trends are largely correct, but the exact inflection point depends on your insurance's perception of your risk level, whether you drive significantly more/less than the average person, .... If you drive fewer miles each year, older cars are even more attractive.

by hansvm

1/17/2025 at 2:44:08 PM

You beat me to it. Have not bought anything newer than a 2000. Next vehicle won't be much newer and will be taken to a mod shop to remove any spy-tech among other things.

by LinuxBender

1/17/2025 at 3:06:32 PM

except for the license plate readers on every corner :)

by bdangubic

1/17/2025 at 2:43:28 PM

Here, all reputable manufacturers (including car manufacturers) obey the GDPR.

Consumers in the USA really need equivalent law to protect their personal data from scrotes like these. Collecting unnecessary personal data should be a liability, not an asset.

by GJim

1/17/2025 at 3:12:17 PM

Stupid consumers, being taken advantage of by one of the largest autombile companies in the world. They really should just... buy cars without computers...

by squigz