Can my car insurance company see my driving data without my permission?

Not from a telematics app, since those are opt-in. Automaker data did reach insurers through brokers without clear consent, which is why GM is now under a federal order and paid state settlements. Verisk says it no longer provides driving behavior reports to insurers, and GM, Honda and Hyundai stopped sharing in 2024.

How do I find out if my driving data was sold?

Request your consumer files from LexisNexis (consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request) and Verisk (fcra.verisk.com). Both companies must show you what they hold and let you dispute it under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Does turning off data sharing raise my insurance rate?

No. Insurers that use telematics for pricing only do so through programs you join. Turning off the carmaker's data sharing has no effect on an insurer program you enrolled in separately, and it has no effect on a standard policy.

Is Progressive Snapshot the same thing as what GM did?

No. Snapshot is an opt-in program that you join for a possible discount, and Progressive tells you up front that risky driving can raise your rate. The GM program sent data to brokers without clear disclosure, and insurers used it in underwriting without offering anything in return.

Can insurers use driving data in California?

Only mileage. California regulations bar insurers from using a device to collect anything other than actual miles driven, and they cannot collect the car's location. A 2026 bill to allow behavior-based telematics did not pass.

Is Your Car Sending Your Driving Data to Insurers? How to Check and How to Stop It

Last Updated on November 7, 2026

By James Shaffer Reviewed by Thomas Rockford, insurance industry executive and financial analyst, on November 7, 2026 How we fact-check

In 2024 a Chevrolet Bolt driver near Seattle found out why his car insurance had jumped. His LexisNexis file, which he requested under federal law, ran 258 pages and listed 640 trips, with start and end times and every hard brake and burst of speed. His car had been reporting on him through General Motors’ OnStar Smart Driver program, and GM had been selling the data to brokers that insurers use to set rates. He never knowingly signed up for that. The story, first reported by Kashmir Hill of The New York Times on March 11, 2024, set off two years of lawsuits, a federal order and a $220 million settlement.

This article covers how that happened, what has changed since, and how to check your own file and turn the sharing off. It also covers the separate question of insurer telematics programs that you join on purpose, since those are a different thing.

Quick tip: You can request your own LexisNexis and Verisk consumer files. If either one shows trip-level driving data you did not agree to share, you have the right to dispute it under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Two Different Pipelines: Insurer apps like Snapshot and Drive Safe & Save are opt-in and tied to a discount. Automaker programs quietly sent driving data to data brokers, and that is what got GM in trouble.
GM Is Under a Federal Order: The FTC finalized an order on January 14, 2026 that bars GM from sharing driving or location data with consumer reporting agencies for five years and requires clear consent going forward.
The Brokers Have Pulled Back: Verisk shut down its driving behavior report in 2024 and says it no longer provides those reports to insurers. GM, Honda and Hyundai all stopped feeding it.
You Can Check and Opt Out: Your LexisNexis and Verisk files are yours to see, and most automakers now let you turn data sharing off in the car’s settings or app.

Table Of Contents

How Your Car Ends Up Talking to Your Insurer
What Happened to GM
It Was Not Only GM
What Insurers Actually Do With Driving Data
How to See What Has Been Collected About You
How to Turn It Off in the Car
What Is Changing in 2026
What This Means When You Shop for Insurance
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources

How Your Car Ends Up Talking to Your Insurer

Almost every new car has a cellular modem. It powers the app that lets you lock the doors from your phone, and it also lets the carmaker collect what the car is doing. That can include trip start and end times, mileage, speed, hard braking, rapid acceleration, late-night driving and, in some cases, location.

There are two ways that data reaches an insurance company, and the difference matters.

Pipeline	Who collects it	Did you agree?	Example
Insurer telematics program	Your insurance company, through its app or a plug-in device	Yes. You enroll for a discount.	Progressive Snapshot, State Farm Drive Safe & Save, Allstate Drivewise
Automaker data sharing	The carmaker, through the car’s built-in modem, then a data broker	Often not clearly. Enrollment was buried in the car’s app or sales process.	GM OnStar Smart Driver sold to LexisNexis and Verisk (ended 2024)

With the first pipeline, you know the deal going in. The insurer tracks your driving, and your rate can go up or down at renewal. Progressive’s Snapshot FAQ says plainly that riskier driving may result in a higher rate at renewal in most states, and State Farm says its Drive Safe & Save adjustment may increase or decrease at each renewal. You can quit either one.

The second pipeline is the one that caused the trouble. According to the Federal Trade Commission’s January 2025 complaint, GM collected location data from some cars as often as every three seconds, along with every instance of hard braking, late-night driving and speeding, and sold it to consumer reporting agencies, which insurers then used to deny coverage or set rates. Michigan’s attorney general said the Smart Driver program ran from 2016 to 2024 and that GM did not disclose to drivers that their data would be sold for this purpose.

What Happened to GM

GM moved fast once the story broke. On April 24, 2024, it announced it was discontinuing Smart Driver across all GM vehicles, unenrolling every customer, and ending its relationships with LexisNexis and Verisk. The data sharing had stopped on March 20, 2024.

The legal fallout took longer.

FTC order. The Federal Trade Commission proposed a settlement in January 2025 and finalized it on January 14, 2026. For five years GM and OnStar cannot share geolocation or driver behavior data with consumer reporting agencies. The order runs 20 years and requires GM to get affirmative express consent before collecting, using or sharing connected vehicle data, to give drivers a way to opt out of location and driving behavior collection, and to let US consumers request a copy of their data and have it deleted. The FTC said the ban was appropriate given what it called GM’s egregious betrayal of consumers’ trust.
California. On May 8, 2026, the California attorney general announced a $12.75 million penalty under the state’s privacy law. GM agreed to stop selling driving data to consumer reporting agencies for five years, delete the driving data it still held within 180 days, and ask LexisNexis and Verisk to delete theirs.
Multistate settlement. On October 29, 2026, a group of 36 attorneys general (35 states and the District of Columbia) announced a $220 million settlement with GM. The investigation found that the OnStar app told more than 370,000 drivers they were not enrolled in Smart Driver while GM kept collecting and selling their data. GM admitted no wrongdoing. The terms require clear consent before collecting or sharing driving and location data, limit what is collected, and require a privacy program with outside assessments. The settlement does not pay anything to drivers directly. A nationwide class action seeking money for consumers was still pending as of that announcement.
Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska. Texas sued GM in August 2024, Arkansas in February 2025 and Nebraska in July 2025, and none of the three joined the multistate deal. The Texas case was still ongoing as of late October 2026.

It Was Not Only GM

A July 26, 2024 investigation by Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey found that Honda had shared data from 97,000 cars with Verisk for $25,920, about 26 cents per car, and that Hyundai had shared data from 1.7 million cars for about $1.04 million. Honda said its program, Driver Feedback, required an opt-in and a second opt-in before sharing with insurers. Hyundai said it had discontinued its Drive Score program in mid-March 2024 and that Verisk was not authorized to share the data with insurers unless the customer consented on an insurer’s site or app.

Verisk’s own consumer page now says it no longer provides these reports to insurers, that it stopped receiving driving data from GM on March 18, 2024 and from Honda and Hyundai on April 9, 2024, and that it has no driving data from vehicles of other manufacturers. The Record reported in June 2024 that Verisk had shut down its Driving Behavior Data History Report entirely.

LexisNexis has been less public about which carmakers feed its telematics products. Kia has acknowledged sharing basic driving information from Kia Connect with LexisNexis to build a driving score, and Subaru and Mitsubishi have appeared on a LexisNexis telematics page. Subaru told The New York Times it shares only odometer readings, and only with the owner’s authorization. A Ford spokesman said in 2024 that Ford does not send connected vehicle data to either broker and shares driving behavior only after the driver agrees on the touchscreen. Toyota has not been reported as a broker source, though a January 2025 Texas lawsuit alleged that Allstate and its data arm, Arity, bought vehicle data directly from several automakers, including Toyota and the Stellantis brands. On April 10, 2025, a Texas trial court ruled that the parent company, Allstate Corp., and its data affiliate, Arity 875 LLC, could not be sued in Texas because neither has a meaningful presence in the state, and the state’s appeal was argued in May 2026 with no decision reported as of this writing.

What Insurers Actually Do With Driving Data

Insurer telematics programs score a short list of behaviors. Between them, the pages for Snapshot, Drive Safe & Save and Drivewise name hard braking, rapid acceleration, speeding, late-night driving, mileage and handheld phone use. State Farm counts speeding as 8 or more mph over the limit and also scores cornering.

Good scores earn a discount, up to 30 percent or more at State Farm depending on the state. Bad scores can raise your rate at renewal with all three companies, in most states. These programs are optional in 49 states. California is the exception. Its regulations say an insurer may only use a device to collect information for determining actual miles driven and may not collect the vehicle’s location. A 2026 bill that would have allowed behavior-based telematics in California died in the legislature in September 2026. Drive Safe & Save and Drivewise discounts are also not offered in a few other states, so check the insurer’s page for yours.

The data from the automaker pipeline was different. It arrived as a report an insurer could pull during underwriting, the same way it pulls your insurance score or your CLUE claims history. You did not see it, and you were not offered a discount for it. That is what the FTC order and the state settlements were about.

How to See What Has Been Collected About You

Both major brokers are consumer reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so they have to show you your file and let you dispute errors.

LexisNexis. Request your consumer disclosure report at consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request. You can also call 1-888-497-0011 or use the mail-in form on that page. If driving data shows up, the corrections line is 1-888-217-1591.
Verisk. Request a report at fcra.verisk.com or call 1-800-627-3487 on weekdays. Verisk provides one free report in any 12-month period. Its driving behavior report now exists only for GM, Honda and Hyundai vehicles with data collected before the 2024 cutoffs.
Your carmaker. Under the FTC order, GM must give you a copy of your data and delete it on request. California residents can make the same request of most companies under state law.

Consumer Reports noted in March 2025 that opting out stops new collection but does not delete existing data. If you want the old data gone, you have to ask for deletion separately.

How to Turn It Off in the Car

The exact steps vary by brand and change with software updates, so use these as a starting point and check your owner’s app.

GM (Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, Cadillac): Smart Driver no longer exists, and all customers were unenrolled in 2024. The FTC order requires an opt-out for location and driving behavior collection in the car or app.
Ford and Lincoln: In the vehicle, go to Settings, then Connectivity, then Connected Vehicle Features, and turn off Share Vehicle Data.
Honda and Acura: Contact Honda to confirm your Driver Feedback status and turn off the Data Sharing Setting in the car’s infotainment settings.
Kia: Cancel Kia Connect through the owner’s portal or by calling 844-886-9411. Hyundai’s Drive Score program was discontinued in 2024.
Subaru: Use the consumer privacy portal at subaru.com.
Toyota and Lexus: Open the Toyota app, go to Account, then Data Privacy Portal.

Keep in mind that turning off data sharing can also turn off features that depend on it, such as crash detection, roadside assistance or remote door locking. Each brand’s app usually says what you will lose.

What Is Changing in 2026

The rules are catching up. Oregon updated its privacy law in 2025 to cover vehicle manufacturers and bar the sale of precise location data. Utah passed a law in its 2026 session that extends the state’s consumer privacy act to carmakers and requires in-vehicle controls to view, opt out of and delete data starting with 2030 models, effective January 1, 2027. Virginia’s Senate passed a bill in February 2026 that would ban the sale of precise location data. In Congress, Senator Mike Lee introduced the Auto Data Privacy and Autonomy Act in December 2025, which would require opt-in consent before any collection or sale, though it had not advanced as of this writing.

The practical result for most drivers is that the hidden pipeline has mostly shut down, at least for now. The one you sign up for on purpose is still there, and it is still a real way to save money if you drive well and do not mind being measured.

What This Means When You Shop for Insurance

If your rate went up in 2022 or 2023 and you drove a GM, Honda or Hyundai with a connected services plan, it is worth pulling your LexisNexis and Verisk files to see whether driving data was part of it. If it was, dispute it, and then get fresh quotes. The 2024 data cutoffs mean any new quote should be priced without it.

If you are deciding whether to join an insurer’s own program, read the fine print on whether your rate can go up. Progressive, State Farm and Allstate all say it can. Try the app for the trial period, look at your score, and then decide. And compare quotes with and without the program, because a company that is cheaper without telematics may still beat a competitor’s discounted rate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Checked November 7, 2026