If you drive a car made by General Motors and it has an internet connection, your car's movements and exact location are being collected and shared anonymously with a data broker. This practice, disclosed in a letter sent by Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts to the Federal Trade Commission on Friday, is yet another way in which automakers are tracking drivers, often without their knowledge.
Previous reporting in The New York Times revealed how automakers including G.M., Honda, and Hyundai collected information about drivers' behavior, such as how often they slammed on the brakes, accelerated rapidly and exceeded the speed limit, then sold it to the insurance industry to gauge individual drivers' riskiness.
One of the surprising findings was how little automakers made from selling driving data. Verisk paid Honda $25,920 over four years for information about 97,000 cars, 26 cents per car. Hyundai was paid just over $1 million, 61 cents per car, over six years.
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