Underhanded insurance data collection Part 2: Allstate Boogaloo

Google is sitting on a gold mine waiting to sell data of everyone using Google maps.

nderwater said:

"Mobile apps that implemented the SDK Routely (now owned by Allstate), Life360, GasBuddy, and Fuel Rewards – are alleged to have collected:

• mobile phone geolocation data, accelerometer data;
• magnetometer data; gyroscopic data;
• trip attributes (start time, end time, distance; GPS points (accuracy, position, longitude, latitude, heading, speed, GPS time, time received, bearing, and altitude of a consumer’s mobile phone);
• derived events (acceleration, speeding, distracted driving, crash detection, etc);
• and metadata (ad ID, country code, operating system User ID, device type, app version, and OS version).

Those apps initially request permission from users to access location data in conjunction with app features. But after an app integrated the Arity SDK, the user was also unwittingly enabled Arity to collect and resell all of that data.

 

I had both Gasbuddy and Life360 installed.  Now we know how all those 'free' apps are actually funded.

For the well more than a decade there has been saying that addresses this:

"If the product is free, you are the product."

XLR99 (Forum Supporter) said:

Is allstate the same company that sent spies to an NER event, ran all the plates and cancelled polices?

When I worked for GEICO they were proud of the fact they did things like that. We were also instructed to file risk reports for any cars with "racing modifications", which included cold air intakes and carbon fiber hoods. Because an aluminum tube with a cone filter on a Yaris means you are a street racer.

back when we switched insurers over to AAA for our cars, we were told to install the app as it would "offer discounts for good driving behavior".

really quickly realized after installing it that it was intrusively monitoring every small g-force input and was constantly telling us to slow down even when doing normal braking to a stop light.  i had no doubt all the telemetry was being funneled back to the insurer and probably sold as well.  the "discount" was just a carrot on a stick.

uninstalled that app as fast as we could and just resigned ourselves to the crappy process of having to switch insurers every couple years to keep our rates from ballooning instead of chasing measly discounts in exchange for being constantly monitored.

unfortunately, on my camaro i had to shut down OnStar and request an opt-out from LexusNexus, who harvests the OnStar data and sells it, to try to stay ahead of yet another data gathering scheme.  this is going to get really tricky - maybe impossible - with new vehicles in the future that are so heavily software based and complex to crack.