Allstate slammed with lawsuit after scheme to spy on millions of Americans is uncovered: 'Without their knowledge or consent'

www.msn.com ^ | 2/9/2025 | Story by Simon Sage

[airdalechief]

Allstate Insurance and its subsidiary Arity are being sued for col­lect­ing, using, and sell­ing over 45 mil­lion Amer­i­cans' dri­ving data to insur­ance companies without consent, according to Malwarebytes.

This case comes amid a tumultuous year for insurance companies, mainly on the home insurance front, as many have recently come under fire for dropping coverage ahead of major weather disasters.

[airdalechief]

Allstate partnered with app developers such as Life360 to covertly gather driving data from users and then use that driving data as justification for raising rates. In addition to using the data for their customers, Allstate has also sold data to other insurance companies so they can raise rates as well. This scheme is being called the "world's largest driving behavior database."

[Ikeon]

Which apps????

[riverrunner]

My brother brought a new car it collects all kinds of data.

The car manufacture most likely sells it to who ever will pay them.

[mewzilla]

My bet is that people didn’t do their own due diligence and did consent.

And will shortly find out the hard way, especially if Allstate refuses to settle.

[mewzilla]

And your brother likely consented to that when he bought the car.

People need to read their paperwork.

[jeffc]

I use Allstate’s DriveWise app. It saves me $$ on my car insurance, about $110 over 6 months.

[ComputerGuy]

Does it monitor time spent in the left lane while driving below the speed limit?.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

There’s always a bicycle, I suppose. ;-)

It is getting to be that an antique or thrift store is the only place to shop.

[Sirius Lee]

I’m financially very comfortable and so can afford Freedom and not be tracked by insurance.

[mewzilla]

We solved the problem this way...

We buy inexpensive cars and get the base trims.

We don’t use the basic tech package we did get, not the Bluetooth, none of it.

If our insurance company does get a hold of our driving data, we don’t care because we drive safely.

[paulcissa]

You paid them so they could resell your data to anyone willing to pay for it. AND, by using the “app” you consented to that arrangement. Feeling abused yet?

[mewzilla]

Just wish our car insurance rates reflected that.

[quantim]

If there is a way to blame this on congress for not doing anything to protect privacy/data info I’ll do it, OTOH don’t like or trust congress in the first place. Quite the dilemma.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

I have a 2021 pickup truck. There was no way to get one that was not “China-Wired”. I read the owner’s manual. About half of it is how this vehicle and its electronics may be used against you by law enforcement.

The customer sentiment was very touching.

[oldtech]

I just have to wonder how our cars & homes would be built & repaired if there was no means of insuring them. Somebody(ies) would surely have to change their ways. Based on what I’ve seen insurance companies seem to be pricing themselves out of existance.

[normbal]

OMG!

Who does ALLSTATE think they are? NSA? FBI? CIA? DHS? Local government?

Sheesh. The noive!

[Z28.310]

About eight months ago, another article reported about SF using apps to secretly track driving...the two mentioned were;

MY RADAR
GAS BUDDY

At the time, we had MY RADAR on the cell phones. It was promptly uninstalled.

(In the voice) “two days later”...actually, it was two days later...
We received an email from SF; “want to save money on your insurance? Get your free plug in monitoring (surveillance) device!”. What an odd coincidence.

How about a Faraday bag instead! Can we get a free Faraday bag?

So, add those two apps to the list of suspects.
Because of this, every app which can be uninstalled was removed.

[trebb]

I bought a new Toyota and part of the app included is defaulted to monitor/collect driving data - I noticed it as I was looking through the functions and it said I had periods of “extreme acceleration” (getting up to speed when getting on a faster road to keep from inconveniencing other drivers), “harsh braking” (seeing how the adaptive radar cruise control worked - which is great), and other such crap...but you can opt out of them collecting that data, so I did....I hear some manufacturers don’t let you opt out.

[MayflowerMadam]

Yikes! On purpose?!?

[MayflowerMadam]

“We buy inexpensive cars and get the base trims.

We don’t use the basic tech package we did get, not the Bluetooth, none of it.”

We purposely buy used cars without the nonsense. You can buy after-market Bluetooth and cameras that (hopefully) are more private.

I do give in to location sharing on my cell with my husband when my sister and I take long road trips together. Just a certain level of safety in case of accident, “gone missing”, etc.