Have your rates gone up recently? Blame these apps
jalopnik.com
"Do you ever feel like you’re
being watched? Like no matter
where you go,
what you do, there’s a corporation
tracking it to sell the data to someone else? Well, according to a
New York Times report, you’re right: Even the apps on your phone are tracking the way you drive, just to sell it to your insurer.
Insurers have long wanted to
track individual drivers to discern their habits, in hopes of finding reasons to raise rates. They’ve tried
OBD dongles and their own
smartphone apps, but now those companies are trying a new tactic: Buying data from the apps you actually
want to have on your phone. From the
New York Times:
This isn’t anonymized, aggregate data. Arity, the data broker, is more than happy to supply insurers with individual scores for individual people — showing companies
exactly how you drive.
Arity is an Allstate brand, so not all competitors use its data, but the data is being collected nonetheless. GasBuddy, Life360, and MyRadar are spying on you regardless of the insurance logo on your bill every month. Selling subscriptions to your app is good, but selling your customers as a product to a third party is apparently even better.
Your car
may well already be tracking your driving to sell to insurers, but this new vector applies even to drivers without
fancy modern data-insecure vehicles. All you need is to own a cell phone — which, of course, the insurers are
already tracking in other ways. Privacy is overrated anyway, right?"
