Splendid Isolation

Snoops

Yeah, don’t fuck mess with Texas:

Texas has sued insurance provider Allstate, alleging that the firm and its data broker subsidiary used data from apps like GasBuddy, Routely, and Life360 to quietly track drivers and adjust or cancel their policies.

Allstate and Arity, a “mobility data and analytics” firm founded by Allstate in 2016, collected “trillions of miles worth of location data” from more than 45 million people, then used that data to adjust rates, according to Texas’ lawsuit. This violates Texas’ Data Privacy and Security Act, which requires “clear notice and informed consent” on how collected data can be used. A statement from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the suit is the first-ever state action targeting comprehensive data privacy violations.

How so?

According to Texas’ complaint (PDF), the data collected included “a phone’s geolocation data, accelerometer data, magnetometer data, and gyroscopic data, which monitors details such as the phone’s altitude, longitude, latitude, bearing, GPS time, speed, and accuracy.”

With that data—plus, in some cases, data from connected vehicles—Allstate could see when, how far, and for how long someone was driving, along with “hard braking events” and “whether a consumer picked up or opened their phone while traveling at certain speeds.”

Texas’ lawsuit claims that Arity incentivized—through “generous bonus incentives”—apps like GasBuddy, a gas price-tracking app, and Life360, which is intended to keep tabs on family members’ location, to “increas[e] the size of their dataset.” Under their agreements with app makers, Arity had “varying levels of control over the privacy disclosures and consent language” shown to app users, according to the complaint.

And now for the doublespeak:

“Arity helps consumers get the most accurate auto insurance price after they consent in a simple and transparent way that fully complies with all laws and regulations.”

But they’re not the only villains in this piece:

The suit also cites Allstate as gathering direct car use data from Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, and Ram vehicles.

And if these assholes shared data with Allstate, you can bet your house that they did so with other insurance companies too.

If you’re not into letting corporations do this to you:

…you may want to avoid any dealings at all with these bastards.  It’s not like Stellantis (Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati) are reporting a boom in sales, after all.

When the Texans win their suit, at it should, I would argue against fines because those bastards will just pass the cost into their customers and claim a tax deduction at worst.

What I would do as TxAG is get a list of all Texans with Allstate policies, and demand that Allstate provide free insurance to them for a period of time commensurate with the start date of Arity’s snoopery.

I know, that would just cause Allstate to cease operations in Texas.  That’s fine, too — take away access to the second-largest pool of drivers in the U.S.

11 comments

  1. the cabin in the woods without a cell phone or modern truck is looking better and better. I wouldn’t be surprised if my streaming video information was being tracked for marketing purposes and other nefarious purposes. I guess buy used DVDs for cash at flea markets and such for entertainment.

    Ted Kaczynski may have had the right idea but certainly the wrong tactics.

    1. Cell phone location is tracked all the time, but since every day is a work call at a different location the algorithms have no idea what to make of me. One day an arena, the next a Chinese grocery, day three a horse ranch. I get a mish mash of ads. It’s like a very small defiant middle finger to the Googles.

  2. “I know, that would just cause Allstate to cease operations in Texas.”
    ========

    Fine. But they still have to pay their penalty as you described it.

    1. I fear all Allstate would do is simply come back with a different name, corporate logo and color scheme in their old offices.
      Probably a lot of familiar faces too…

  3. Not all data collection is good data collection – The term is GIGO – Garbage in – Garbage out.

    In Massachusetts the DMV collects milage data for each vehicle at the time of annual vehicle inspections. It then shares that info with all the insurance companies who then set your rates based in part on how many miles you drove that car last year. So – since I drive the GT3 less than 5,000 miles a year, my 20 year old Porsche is automatically rated at special low use rates. – I’m not going to tell them that a substantial portion of those miles are accumulated at Track Days.

    1. Good thing your old car doesn’t have a modern car chip with accelerometer and speed data to blab to your insurance company.
      I can see them now envisioning that data coming from a drive on public roads. They’d shit their pants and demand the police arrest you after your track day.

  4. Fines and other financial penalties don’t seem to deter this kind of crap. What the State of Texas needs to do is put few C level executives in prison. Better yet, imprison the Chairman of the Board. That’s where the buck stops, right?

    1. This is a hell of an idea. I’d like it to be carried further, maybe tar and feather any C-level who insists on the following:

      1. Offshoring
      2. Cloud Computing
      3. DEI

  5. Sometimes living in the EU with its strict data protection and privacy laws and regulations has its advantages.
    Here those practices would cost Allstate AND those app providers so much money they’d go out of business from just the fines, let alone the compensation to consumers.

  6. > “whether a consumer picked up or opened their phone while traveling at certain speeds.”

    Of course they take into consideration that the consumer might be a passenger, right? Right?

Comments are closed.