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Stories filed under: "auto"

People Are Slowly Realizing Their Auto Insurance Rates Are Skyrocketing Because Their Car Is Covertly Spying On Them

from the everything-you-own-is-spying-on-you dept

Last month the New York Times’ Kashmir Hill published a major story on how GM collects driver behavior data then sells access (through LexisNexis) to insurance companies, which will then jack up your rates.

The absolute bare minimum you could could expect from the auto industry here is that they’re doing this in a way that’s clear to car owners. But of course they aren’t; they’re burying “consent” deep in the mire of some hundred-page end user agreement nobody reads, usually not related to the car purchase — but the apps consumers use to manage roadside assistance and other features.

Since Kashmir’s story was published, she says she’s been inundated with complaints by consumers about similar behavior. She’s even discovered that she’s one of the folks GM spied on and tattled to insurers about. In a follow up story, she recounts how she and her husband bought a Chevy Bolt, were auto-enrolled in a driver assistance program, then had their data (which they couldn’t access) sold to insurers.

GM’s now facing 10 different federal lawsuits from customers pissed off that they were surreptitiously tracked and then forced to pay significantly more for insurance:

“In 10 federal lawsuits filed in the last month, drivers from across the country say they did not knowingly sign up for Smart Driver but recently learned that G.M. had provided their driving data to LexisNexis. According to one of the complaints, a Florida owner of a 2019 Cadillac CTS-V who drove it around a racetrack for events saw his insurance premium nearly double, an increase of more than $5,000 per year.”

GM (and some apologists) will of course proclaim that this is only fair that reckless drivers pay more, but that’s generally not how it works. Pressured for unlimited quarterly returns, insurance companies will use absolutely anything they find in the data to justify rising rates.

And as the sector is getting automated by sloppy AI, those determinations aren’t going to go in your favor (see: AI’s rushed implementation in healthcare). That’s before the fact that consumers aren’t being told about the surveillance, and aren’t given a clear option to stop it. Or that the data is also being sold to a litany of dodgy data brokers who, in turn, see minimal oversight.

If this follows historical precedent, GM will pay out a relative pittance in legal fees and fines, claim they’ve changed their behavior, then simply rename these programs into something else after heavy consultation with their legal department. Something more carefully crafted, with bare-bones consumer alerts, to exploit the fact that the U.S. remains too corrupt to pass even a baseline modern privacy law.

Automakers — which have long had some of the worst privacy reputations in all of tech — are one of countless industries that lobbied relentlessly for decades to ensure Congress never passed a federal privacy law or regulated dodgy data brokers. And that the FTC — the over-burdened regulator tasked with privacy oversight — lacks the staff, resources, or legal authority to police the problem at any real scale.

The end result is just a parade of scandals. And if Hill were so inclined, she could write a similar story about every tech sector in America, given everything from your smart TV and electricity meter to refrigerator and kids’ toys now monitor your behavior and sell access to those insights to a wide range of dodgy data broker middlemen, all with nothing remotely close to ethics or competent oversight.

And despite the fact that this free for all environment is resulting in no limit of dangerous real-world harms, our Congress has been lobbied into gridlock by a cross-industry coalition of companies with near-unlimited budgets, all desperately hoping that their performative concerns about TikTok will distract everyone from the fact we live in a country too corrupt to pass a real privacy law.

Filed Under: auto, auto insurance, auto insurance rates, car, data brokers, privacy, surveillance
Companies: gm

Google Supports Oregon ‘Right To Repair’ Reform

from the watch-what-I-do,-not-what-I-say dept

Wed, Jan 17th 2024 03:37pm - Karl Bode

Big tech companies have long attempted to monopolize repair options to boost their profits, whether we’re talking about tractors, phones, or game consoles.

But in recent years companies like Apple and Microsoft appear to have realized that with state and federal lawmakers and regulators cracking down on this behavior, and right to repair seeing widespread, bipartisan consumer support, it might be smart to stop swimming upstream when it comes to “right to repair.”

Both Microsoft and Apple have slowly and begrudgingly started making their hardware easier to fix, and have even at times come out in support of certain state and federal right to repair legislation. Now Google has also somewhat pivoted on the issue, coming out in support of Oregon’s looming right to repair legislation, which aims to make tools, parts, and manuals easier to access.

Said Google in a new white paper:

“Repair must be easy enough for anyone to do, whether they are technicians or do-it-yourselfers. This requires that as manufacturers we design products in a manner that enables simple, safe, and correct repairs wherever and by whomever they are done. This is what we call design for serviceability.”

Keep in mind this “support” isn’t always consistent, and many of these companies only support reform as-so-far as their lawyers are writing the laws, ensuring they’re filled with ample loopholes.

Apple, for example, got widespread press praise for “doing a 180 on right to repair” after it supported California’s right to repair law. But upon closer inspection many of the company’s initiatives were somewhat hollow. It still actively supports anti-consumer behaviors like software locks and “parts pairing” (forcing customers to buy interconnected assemblages of parts), and it opposed Oregon’s reform law.

Three states have now passed right to repair laws (New York, Minnesota, California), with Oregon on deck next month. But while many of these laws have been significant improvements (Minnesota), others (New York) were watered down by tech lobbyists after passage, almost to the point of uselessness.

New York’s law, for example, was boiled down to exclude coverage of the automotive, medical equipment, or agricultural gear sectors, where most of the worst, ham-fisted efforts to monopolize repair are ongoing (consolidation of repair options, monopolization of parts, obnoxious and punitive DRM, or actively making tools and manuals hard to come by to discourage independent repair).

So while it’s great to see these companies at least begin to make an effort when it comes to right to repair reforms, it’s still a mistake to take them exclusively at their word.

Filed Under: auto, consumer rights, consumers, drm, hardware, independent repair, oregon, phones, right to repair
Companies: google

NHTSA Backtracks On Its Dumb Opposition To ‘Right To Repair’

from the you-are-not-helping dept

Thu, Aug 24th 2023 05:34am - Karl Bode

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has backed off of its ill-advised opposition to right to repair after presumably getting an earful from reformers and the Biden administration.

This past June, NHTSA issued guidance advising the auto industry to basically ignore Massachusetts’ new right to repair law, which required that all modern vehicle systems be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform allowing owners and repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device. The industry’s justification: the new law would harm consumer privacy and security:

“While NHTSA has stressed that it is important for consumers to continue to have the ability to choose where to have their vehicles serviced and repaired, consumers must be afforded choice in a manner that does not pose an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety.”

Except that’s… not true. Not only was the NHTSA’s intervention not helpful and not based in fact, it effectively undermined the Biden Administration’s claims it supports extremely popular right to repair reforms. It also undermined Massachusetts voters, whose representatives had approved the law 75-25.

An auto-industry lawsuit had already delayed implementation of the law. The industry also ran ads falsely claiming it would somehow aid sexual predators. That right to repair reform will harm consumer privacy and security in a litany of terrible ways is the standard argument for repair monopolists like the auto industry, though a recent FTC report found that the lion’s share of those claims simply weren’t true.

According to 404 Media (a new tech news outlet created from Motherboard folks fleeing the Vice bankruptcy mess), the NHTSA is backtracking from its June announcement. In a letter to MA Assistant AG Eric Haskell, the NHTSA said it found a way to “advance our mutual interest in ensuring safe consumer choice for automotive repair and maintenance. NHTSA strongly supports the right to repair.”

Right to repair activists like PIRG’s Nathan Proctor tell 404 Media the damage has already been done:

“We strongly support the goals the agency puts forward—to protect repair choice and maintain safety. However, as it stands, the agency has achieved neither goal,” he said. “Instead, it has allowed a proliferation of serious safety and monopolization issues to continue without meaningful resistance. Let’s hope this new letter signals a change in approach. We don’t plan to stop our work until cars not only are safe, but also enjoy the full slate of Right to Repair protections.”

While the NHTSA doesn’t seem in any rush to hold Tesla meaningfully accountable for the growing pile of corpses created by Tesla’s undercooked and clearly misrepresented “full self driving” car technology, it somehow found the time to undermine a hugely popular, grass roots reform effort. Great job.

Of course that’s how regulatory capture works. Repair monopolists like John Deere, Apple, and the auto industry seed the landscape with all kinds of bullshit about how being able to affordably and easily repair things you fucking own is somehow diabolically dangerous. Captured lawmakers, regulators, and governors then use those claims to either prevent right to repair laws from passing (see: California), or to undermine them if they already have (see: New York).

Filed Under: auto, consumers, independent repair, joe biden, massachusetts, mechanics, nhtsa, regulatory capture, right to repair, security

Hackers Already Prepared To Screw Up BMW’s Subscription Heated Seat Model

from the you-no-longer-own-the-things-you-buy dept

Tue, Jul 26th 2022 05:29am - Karl Bode

Earlier this month BMW took ample heat for its plans to turn heated seats into a costly $18 per month subscription in numerous countries. As we noted at the time, BMW is already including the hardware in new cars and adjusting the sale price accordingly. So it’s effectively charging users a new, recurring fee to enable technology that already exists in the car and consumers already paid for.

The move portends a rather idiotic and expensive future for consumers, and hackers and tinkerers aren’t having it. Grey market hackers have already been fiddling with BMW systems for years, providing users greater control over things they already own. And they’re more than ready to begin meeting customer demand for a way to bypass BMW’s dumb, greedy idea:

“We’re always listening to our customers and finding ways to offer the features they’re looking for. As long as BMW makes it possible to activate heated seats, we can look at offering it. If BMW doesn’t allow it, then the same feature could be added with a hardware retrofit, so in the end the driver is always going to be able to get what they want,” Paul Smith, content marketing specialist at Bimmer Tech, a BMW coding firm, told Motherboard in an email.

BMW has a history of claiming that any kind of tinkering invalidates a user’s warranty. Since the seat heating tech already exists in the car that users have paid for, claims that enabling it violates warranties could result in BMW running afoul of the FTC’s new crackdown on right to repair violations.

For its part, BMW continues to double down on the delusion that charging people extra (in perpetuity) for something they already own and paid for is somehow a wonderful value equation:

“The ConnectedDrive Store in the UK offers customers the opportunity to add selected features which they did not order when the vehicle was built … This functionality is particularly useful for secondary owners, as they now have the opportunity to add features which the original owner did not choose … Drivers can also experiment with a feature by activating a short-term trial before committing to a full purchase.”

The heated seat subscription option is part of the company’s “Connected Drive” program, and is already reality in Korea, the UK, New Zealand, Germany, and South Africa. It hasn’t come to the U.S. yet, and the recent backlash likely has the company rethinking that expansion.

Filed Under: auto, freedom to tinker, heated seats, right to repair, subscription service, warranty
Companies: bmw