Your Car Sold You Out for 26 Cents and Your Insurance Went Up $200
The world's worst trade deal, explained
By Cat Casey | The Shield Blog
Part 6 of 12 in the "Who Sold My Data?" Series
In 2024, we learned exactly how much your car thinks you're worth.
Honda: Sold driving data from 97,000 vehicles for $25,920.
Per car: 26 cents.
Hyundai: Sold driving data from 1.7 million vehicles for just over $1 million.
Per car: 61 cents.
Your car watched every mile you drove. Every hard brake. Every time you accelerated too fast. Every late-night trip and early morning commute. It packaged all of that into a behavioral profile and sold it.
For pocket change.
Meanwhile, car insurance rates increased 24% in 2023—the largest single-year jump in decades.
Coincidence?
What Your Car Knows About You
Modern cars are smartphones on wheels. They contain dozens of sensors, constant connectivity, and software that tracks everything.
Here's what your car is likely recording:
- Speed — every moment, including brief exceedances
- Acceleration patterns — how hard you press the gas
- Braking behavior — hard stops, gradual stops, frequency
- Cornering — how aggressively you take turns
- Seatbelt usage — when you wear it, when you don't
- Location — every trip start, trip end, and route taken
- Time of driving — early morning, late night, rush hour
- Trip duration and frequency
- Mileage — down to the tenth of a mile
- Phone integration — what devices connect, when
- Infotainment usage — what you listen to, what apps you use
If your car has OnStar, Connected Services, or any similar telematics system, it's collecting this data. And if you clicked "I Agree" during setup—which you did, because who reads a 40-page terms of service when they're excited about their new car—you consented to sharing it.
The LexisNexis Report
In early 2024, a driver in Florida did something unusual: she requested her data from LexisNexis, one of the largest data aggregators in the country.
What she found was disturbing.
130 pages of driving data she never knowingly provided.
Every trip she'd taken in her car. Start time. End time. Distance. Location. Speed patterns. Braking events. Her entire driving history, packaged and scored.
She didn't sign up for this. She didn't install a tracking device. She didn't opt into any special program.
Her car did it automatically. OnStar (a GM service) collected the data and sent it to LexisNexis. LexisNexis packaged it and sold access to insurance companies.
Her insurance rates had gone up. Now she knew why.
The Data Flow
Here's how the pipeline works:
- Your car collects data via telematics systems (OnStar, Toyota Connected Services, Hyundai BlueLink, etc.)
- The manufacturer sells that data to aggregators like LexisNexis or Verisk
- The aggregators create "risk scores" based on your driving behavior
- Insurance companies buy these scores to inform pricing decisions
- Your premiums go up based on data you didn't know was being collected
You're not told. You're not asked. The data flows invisibly from your car to companies who use it against you.
That 130-page report? It included a "risk score" that insurance companies used to decide the driver was a higher risk than her driving record indicated. Her claims history was clean. Her driving data told a different story—one she never got to explain or contest.
The GM Reckoning
In January 2025, the FTC took action against General Motors—the first major enforcement against an automaker for telematics data practices.
The findings were damning:
- GM collected precise geolocation data and driving behavior from millions of vehicles
- The company sold this data to third parties including insurance companies
- Consumers were enrolled by default through deceptive practices
- GM failed to get proper consent for data collection and sharing
- The OnStar "Smart Driver" feature transmitted data even when users thought they'd declined
The punishment:
- Banned from selling driver data for 5 years
- Required to offer clear opt-out mechanisms
- Must allow consumers to delete collected data
The scope:
- 14 million+ vehicles affected
- Data had been flowing to insurers for years before anyone caught on
GM isn't the only manufacturer doing this. They're just the first one to get caught and punished.
The Insurance Connection
Let's talk about what this data is actually used for.
Insurance companies have always used data to price risk. Your age. Your ZIP code. Your claims history. Whether you've taken a safe driving course.
Telematics data takes this to another level entirely. It's not just who you are—it's exactly how you drive, measured continuously, forever.
The pitch sounds reasonable: "Good drivers should pay less!" But the implementation is surveillance.
What counts as "risky" behavior?
- Hard braking (even when avoiding an accident someone else caused)
- Driving late at night (even if you work night shifts)
- Accelerating quickly (even when merging onto a highway safely)
- Frequent short trips (even if that's just how your life works)
- Driving in certain areas (even if that's where you live)
The algorithms are proprietary. You can't see how your score is calculated. You can't dispute the methodology. You can't explain context to a machine.
You just get a higher rate and a vague explanation that your "driving patterns" suggest elevated risk.
The Rate Spike
In 2023, car insurance rates in the United States increased by 24%.
Was there a sudden epidemic of bad driving? Did accident rates spike 24%? Did repair costs alone justify a quarter of your premium disappearing?
Or did insurance companies suddenly get access to a treasure trove of behavioral data that let them identify who they could charge more—and did exactly that?
The timing is suspicious. The data flow from cars to insurers ramped up significantly in the early 2020s. By 2023, the industry had enough information to dramatically reprice risk across their entire customer base.
People who thought they were good drivers discovered they were "algorithmically risky." People who'd been driving the same way for decades suddenly saw their rates jump.
The data revealed things that claims history alone couldn't show. And insurance companies used every bit of it.
You Didn't Consent (But Legally You Did)
The consent mechanism for telematics is buried in the setup process for your car's connected features.
When you bought your car, you were excited. The dealer was showing you features. You wanted to get OnStar working, or set up the app that lets you remote start your car, or enable the navigation system.
Somewhere in that process, you clicked through a terms of service agreement. Probably on a small screen in the car, or quickly on your phone while standing in the dealership.
That agreement contained language authorizing data collection and sharing. Language that, if you'd read it carefully, would have revealed you were signing up for comprehensive surveillance.
But you didn't read it carefully. Nobody does. The agreements are designed to be accepted, not read.
And now, years later, there are 130 pages of your life sitting in a database. Because you wanted to use the GPS.
The Manufacturer Defense
When confronted with this reporting, car manufacturers tend to say:
- "Data sharing is optional" (But opt-out is buried and confusing)
- "Consumers can control their data" (Through settings most people don't know exist)
- "We anonymize the information" (But re-identification is trivially easy with trip data)
- "It improves safety" (But it's being used for insurance pricing, not safety)
- "Consumers agreed to the terms" (The terms nobody reads)
The defenses are technically true and functionally meaningless. The system is designed to maximize data collection while providing legal cover. It's working exactly as intended.
How to Check If Your Car Is Snitching
Step 1: Request your LexisNexis consumer disclosure report.
Go to: consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request
Request your full file. It's free (thanks to the Fair Credit Reporting Act).
What you receive may shock you.
Step 2: Request your Verisk report.
Verisk is the other major player in driver data.
Go to: personalreports.verisk.com
Request your report and see what they have.
Step 3: Check your car manufacturer's data practices.
Look for "Connected Services," "Telematics," or "Data Sharing" in your:
- Car's infotainment system settings
- Manufacturer's mobile app (OnStar, FordPass, MyHyundai, etc.)
- Account settings on the manufacturer's website
Step 4: Opt out if possible.
The process varies by manufacturer. Some make it relatively easy. Others make it deliberately confusing. You may need to:
- Cancel connected services entirely
- Call customer service and explicitly request data deletion
- Submit a formal CCPA/state privacy law request
Warning: Opting out may disable features you actually use, like remote start, vehicle location, or crash notification. The manufacturers have bundled surveillance with useful features to make opting out painful.
The Rental Car Problem
Think you're safe because you don't own a connected car?
Rental cars are connected too. When you rent a vehicle, you're driving a car that's collecting data about your trips, your driving patterns, and your location.
That data belongs to the rental company. And their terms of service (which you clicked through at the counter) may allow them to share it.
So your one-week rental could end up in a database somewhere, associated with your rental agreement, potentially linkable back to you.
There's no way to opt out of rental car surveillance short of refusing to rent the car.
What Needs to Change
The FTC action against GM is a start, but it's not enough.
What would actually fix this:
- Opt-in, not opt-out. Data collection should require explicit, informed consent—not buried terms of service.
- Unbundling. You should be able to use navigation without enabling location tracking for third parties.
- Transparency. Manufacturers should be required to disclose exactly what data is collected, where it goes, and who buys it.
- Consumer access. You should be able to see your own data and scores without filing formal requests.
- Deletion rights. Opting out should delete historical data, not just stop future collection.
- Insurance regulation. States should limit or prohibit the use of telematics data in insurance pricing without explicit consumer consent and transparency.
Until then, you're driving a surveillance device that sold your behavioral profile for less than a cup of coffee.
The Bottom Line
Your car is watching you.
Every trip. Every brake. Every acceleration. Every turn. Every moment behind the wheel is logged, scored, and sold.
Honda sold you for 26 cents. Hyundai got 61 cents. GM had 14 million vehicles feeding data before anyone stopped them.
Your insurance company bought that data and raised your rates. You never knew the data existed until it was too late.
The car you paid $40,000 for is making money for other people by reporting on your behavior. You didn't agree to this. At least, not in any meaningful sense. You agreed in the legal sense—the one designed to provide cover, not consent.
Somewhere in a database, there's a 130-page report on your driving life. Companies you've never heard of have scored you based on data you didn't know you were generating.
And your car manufacturer? They got 26 cents.
The deal of a lifetime. Just not for you.
Next week: "BetterHelp Told Facebook You're Depressed. Facebook Showed You Ads for More Therapy." — When your cry for help becomes a sales lead.
About the Author: Cat Casey is the CEO of ZoraSafe and has spent 20+ years in cybersecurity. She requested her LexisNexis report after writing this article and encourages you to do the same.
The Shield Blog publishes weekly investigations into the companies profiting from your data and the practical steps you can take to fight back. Subscribe to get each article in your inbox.
Sources: FTC enforcement action against General Motors (January 2025); New York Times investigation into LexisNexis driving data; The Markup reporting on connected car data sharing; state attorney general consumer protection filings; insurance industry pricing data.