Privacy

32120 readers

309 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

778

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 8 months ago by rinze@infosec.pub to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

150 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I disagree, they're effective and a reasonably privacy-friendly way of predicting risk. Younger people are generally more aggressive drivers than older people, and older people generally have worse reactions than younger people. It's one of the strongest indicators for driving behavior before an infraction is recorded.

I don't like it either, but it's better imo than using one of those driving meters.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So I’m not against using age, but binning it coarsely is the issue when it can be handled much more granularly.

64-65 is probably a negligible amount of risk increase, but 64-69 is going to be much bigger. Looking at younger ages the effect is more extreme where they’re probably charging late 20’s drivers more because they’re pooled with low 20’s.

Anyway, on average it probably works out the same, but in practice I never bin data where I can avoid it, since you get better information looking at it as a continuous range.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

Ah, makes sense. I'm guessing that their data sources bin ages as well, so there could be issues in moving to a continuous range.

I wish the whole thing was more transparent.