General Motors is collecting data on its car owners’ driving habits and selling that information to insurers without consumers’ consent or knowledge, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Texas is alleging GM has engaged in “false, deceptive and misleading” business practices that have impacted 1.8 million Texans who own vehicles manufactured by the automaker.
The lawsuit comes amid increased scrutiny of new car systems that can track vehicles’ speeds, their locations and even how hard a driver brakes, with Mozilla last year proclaiming that new cars “are a privacy nightmare.” The Texas lawsuit claims car buyers were told their driving data would help GM improve the safety and functionality of its vehicles, but weren’t informed that the same data would also be sold to insurers.
“Millions of American drivers wanted to buy a car, not a comprehensive surveillance system that unlawfully records information about every drive they take and sells their data …