Posted on 06/11/2024 7:16:13 AM PDT by george76
Popular smartphone apps used to track people’s location and provide weather reports may hand over driving data to a firm that sells the information to insurance companies for the purposes of setting rates for unsuspecting motorists...
apps Life360, MyRadar and Gas Buddy are providing user data to an Allstate-owned company, Arity, which computes the numbers to create a “driving score” that takes into account any risky behavior behind the wheel...
That information is then sold to other insurance firms — with user consent — which set rates for their customers
...
Life360, which is used by parents to keep track of their kids’ locations; Gas Buddy, which helps drivers find gas stations that offer the cheapest fuel; and MyRadar, which tracks storms and inclement weather, all have opt-in driving analysis features that rely on sensor and motion data transmitted by smartphones, according to the report.
The opt-in feature for Gas Buddy gives users information on the fuel efficiency for their drives — a technology that is “powered by Arity.”
...
Life360 offers a similar opt-in function which collects drivers’ geolocation and mobile device sensor data and then shares it with Arity “so they can work with participating insurance companies to better understand how you behave behind the wheel and make offers based on how you drive
...
Kathleen Lomax, a New Jersey resident who paid for a $100 annual subscription to Life360 in order to track the location of her husband and her two 18-year-old daughters, told the Times that she canceled the app when she learned that it was selling users’ driving data.
...
drivers reported that their insurance rates went up after the car companies from which they bought their vehicle sent data about their driving behavior to issuers without their knowledge.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
so that’s why my insurance company keeps emailing me telling me to get their app ,LOL ,
Be sure to turn on “Use location services only when using app” and keep the app off.
“... selected that app for parking without once thinking about the user experience.”
I have worked in the tech arena all my adult years. I could write a book on how many times that we have had to ask about a machine’s work flow or a computer program that is totally not intuitive. Every time when we ask if the author/engineer ever actually used the device or program in question the answer many times times is “uhmmm - no.”
Some time ago I started looking for a phone that was just a phone, no apps, no web, no smarts. This article reminds me I need to start looking again.
Has anyone found one? I tend to leave my phone as much as possible. But, we no longer have a house phone and I sort of carry the damned cell around with me all day. I hate that.
But is there a dumb phone that does not track you and sell your info and spy on you? Just make phone calls? Anyone know?
I use the MyRadar app (the freebie version), and I like it. Looking through the settings, I found something called MyDrives, which I assume is what the article is talking about. You can enable it if you want, but it is disabled by default.
Laugh if you like, but there really were phone cops back in the day. I know because I met one of them...
I was in the power industry for 30 years during which time the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident happened. The research institute I worked for did a huge amount of work understanding the root causes of the accident. The biggest failure was poor “human factors engineering” — the operators couldn’t figure out what was happening in the reactor because of poor presentation of data to the operators.
It’s the same in software as you point out. The people who design these things don’t use them and don’t convene enough panels to get user input.
It’s the same on telephone systems. Most of them play “music” that makes me want to take ice picks to my eardrums. The electronic crap “music,” fake keyboard sounds, interruptions every 30 seconds to tell you “your call is important to us,” and the inability to get a human on the line drives me insane. Don’t any of those people actually ask customer what their phone experience was like?
Apple is smart — they give you the option of three music genres AND an option to listen in blissful silence.
I’m convinced that the horrible wait music on phone systems is done that way deliberately to get people to hang up. If a customer hangs up, then nobody actually has to help that customer.
LOL…good theory. But why must they tell me “Your call is important to us” while torturing me?
And how much longer must we be told “Listen carefully as our menus have recently changed.” Does “recently” mean three years ago? How could every business in America have changed its menus recently? There must be a huge consulting business on Phone Menu Design.
Back when I was married we had it on our and the kids' phones since my step daughter had just started driving and my son was walking to school. I noticed after I had installed it that it displayed the maximum speed you traveled on any given trip
I took that as a personal challenge.
The highest I was ever able to get it was 184.
Good times.
We were at a restaurant the other day that required us to order with a QR code and made it hard without the app.
We got up and went to a real restaurant with actual servers.
“Has anyone found one? “
i have one of these and no “plan” with t-mobile, just pay-as-you-go:
What, do you expect them to be honest? If they were, they'd say, "We don't give a crap about you or your problems, and we'd be a lot happier if you'd just quit bothering us."
So right! That they have to tell you “we care about you” tells you the exact opposite!
If they were honest, they would add “if we really cared about you, we’d staff up to handle the call volume and hire Americans who speak English.”
Selling user data without users explicit consent (and not just “by installing this app you consent to everything”) should be a felony, one ciunt per person affected. Of course, that would be if we lived not in a surveillance totalitarian state, which however we unfortunately do.
I don't need their app on my phone to access any information I want.
Not gonna happen.
p
I deleted the Weather app on my phone the first time it told me what the weather was one block away from my position.
That would have been our response in your situation.
I told the manager too. The food smelled great but not if I have to do all the work.
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