Common Motors has agreed to pay $12.5 million {dollars} to settle claims that the automaker illegally bought location and driving information of a whole lot of 1000’s of Californians, state officers mentioned Friday.
The settlement is an instance of how automakers are dealing with extra scrutiny over allegations that they share driver information with the insurance coverage business, influencing how a lot individuals pay for protection. California, although, has a regulation that bars insurers from utilizing driving information to set charges.
“If we get phrase that an organization is illegally accumulating, storing or promoting client information, we gained’t hesitate to look beneath the hood and maintain them accountable to the regulation,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta mentioned in a information convention.
The settlement is the most important California Client Privateness Act penalty within the state’s historical past, Bonta mentioned.
The act provides California shoppers the appropriate to request that companies disclose what information they acquire. They’ll additionally choose out of the sharing or sale of their private data and request that companies delete their information.
Investigators discovered that from 2020 to 2024, GM bought driver information, together with names, contact data, location information and driving conduct information, to information brokers Verisk Analytics Inc. and LexisNexis Danger Options. The info got here from a driver’s use of OnStar, which is owned by GM and offers roadside help, navigation and different providers.
GM mentioned the settlement addresses a product known as OnStar Sensible Driver that the corporate discontinued in 2024. The product was meant to assist enhance individuals’s driving however confronted privateness considerations from shoppers. In 2024, GM additionally ended its partnership with the 2 information brokers and mentioned it could improve privateness controls.
“Car connectivity is central to a contemporary and protected driving expertise, which is why we’re dedicated to being clear and clear with our clients about our practices and the alternatives and management they’ve over their data,” a GM spokesperson mentioned in an announcement.
Varied district attorneys all through the state, together with in Los Angeles and San Francisco, have been concerned within the investigation and settlement.
Know-how has been enjoying a much bigger position within the auto business, however the information collected from drivers can reveal private details about individuals’s day by day habits, together with the place they drop off their children and physician visits.
The California Privateness Safety Company in 2023 began investigating the privateness practices of related vehicles. Because the state was wanting into the automakers, the New York Occasions reported in 2024 that GM was sharing client driving conduct with insurance coverage corporations. Nationwide, GM reportedly made roughly $20 million from promoting information to Verisk and LexisNexis.
The state’s privateness safety company has taken motion towards different automakers earlier than. Ford Motor Firm was fined $375,703 in March and Honda was fined $632,500 in 2025 for privateness violations.
Beneath the GM settlement, which nonetheless wants court docket approval, the automaker would delete any driving information the corporate saved inside 180 days and request that the 2 information brokers do the identical. They’d additionally cease promoting driving information to client reporting businesses for 5 years and develop a privateness program that features assessing and mitigating the dangers of knowledge collected from OnStar.
California’s settlement with GM got here after the Federal Commerce Fee in 2025 additionally took motion towards the automaker and OnStar for its privateness practices, barring them from disclosing location and driver conduct information to client reporting businesses for 5 years.
