Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/11/rates-up-your-car-might-be-talking-to-your-insurance-company.html
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you can insist that OnStar remain unactivated when a new vehicle is purchased. that will put a stop to the data collection nonsense.
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At least we may be assured that once the purloined personal data is examined and the driver is discovered to have been a safe and cautious driver that their insurance rates will be summarily lowered. ([paws for effect] buahahahahahh! [door slam])
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In 20 years driving a 30-year-old car will be a sign of wealth, maybe even impunity.
Old money is already way ahead of the curve there. They’ve been driving ancient Volvos and station wagons as status symbols for decades, even as they no doubt have investments in manufacturers of cars loaded with spyware.
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I’m neither a competent security researcher nor have I had the chance to poke a recent-model OnStar; but the fact that you can start your activation online with just a VIN leaves me pessimistic about how passive the system actually is; unless there’s some sort of mandatory local interaction step later in the process that I’d need a VIN to get to.
You can absolutely have OnStar set to a state where it won’t provide user-facing features; but it’s probably best to assume that it’s still, at a minimum, live enough to be ordered to resume full activity over the air.
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Good thing my car just turned 18 then.
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“car might be talking to your insurance company”
IMO, there’s no “might” about it. If it wasn’t already built-in, many insurers want car owners to add that capability:
My car is 20 years old. I would like to buy a hybrid or EV, but issues with computerization, recent recalls, and lack of standardization made me put those plans on hold. Now I’m wondering if conversion is a better option. 
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You can activate OnStar and opt out of the driving data collection. GM calls it OnStar Smart Driver and you can choose to not enable it for your OnStar account. Allegedly, if that is disabled they do not collect and share this data.
It does say when you enable it that insurance companies can request your Smart Driver data to see if you are eligible for “discounts” (and of course it goes the other way as well)
I’ll find out soon enough. I do not have Smart Driver enabled, never have. I requested my Lexis-Nexis report so I can see if there is any OnStar data in it.
This has been a thing for years. I have a 2017 Volt, purchased in 2021, and it has been an option on my OnStar settings from day one. I was not enrolled in it by default, but that may not be the case for a leased vehicle.
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Had and loved my 2013 Volt until the battery died a sad, sudden, and expensive-to-repair death. I didn’t enable OnStar either.
I just requested a disclosure report.
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You know those loyalty cards to use at the grocers and the pharmacy? Your health insurers and life insurers would love to buy that data, if they haven’t already.
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After looking into things 10 years ago, I opted to disconnect the sat antenna on my chev spark when I bought it.
Lots of verbal shell games on the GM website regarding opting out. There are multiple options for opting out but then it will say things like for advertisers and not address insurance companies or data collection as a whole.
Some GM owners will pull the OnStar fuse but that also disables the BT microphone. Makes me wonder if the car’s control board where it stores the driver info is still collecting and will upload the minute the fuse is put back in?
Some owners will also get in the dash and pull the wireless module.
Another problem I see is that owners selling their car are instructed by GM to cancel or transfer their account and have the data deleted- imagine the next owner speeding everywhere and affecting your report. There is also a process to “correct” wrong data… I’m sure that will be frustrating and fruitless.
They also recommend to instruct any person that drives the car that their data is being recorded too… Since that person never “consented” for GM’s data collection they leave that legal loophole open for the car owner.
What a neat car.
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more than old enough to drive itself?
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One of mine is about to turn 22. I don’t think it managed to sneak out of the garage to get a celebratory first adult beverage, but I can’t be sure because it’s too old to snitch on itself. 
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Probably won’t see any data. Smart Driver is only supported by 2015 and newer telematics modules per OnStar’s support pages.
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Given how software-intensive vehicles are these days, do they come with an EULA? My 20 year old Saturn is looking better and better compared to these flaky-sensor-laden, surveillance-heavy vehicles that just might kill you if they encounter a bug in the millions of lines of code they carry.
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We had a spare car a few years back that was driven less than 2000 miles per year, so I asked for a low mileage discount on the insurance. Later on I had the car serviced at a third-party shop and noticed that the tech mis-entered the current odometer reading by adding an extra 10K miles. I didn’t think of it again until my insurance company cancelled the discount due to “excessive mileage” at the next renewal. It’s not just OnStar, everyone who touches your car is selling your data.
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I did a double-take when this story came out, right at the “update the transmission software” point.
I spent too many years managing software updates in computers to want to add that to my vehicle maintenance checklist. 
Nor do I want to know how much finger-pointing goes on if car owners have to file an insurance claim because of it.
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GM can’t collect data on a vehicle that has never activated OnStar. there was never an agreement for the data to be collected.
