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.
I still have my 2010 Mazda 3. The only tech it has is Bluetooth connectivity for phone and music and some voice commands for calls.
The day I will change cars will be the day my car completely dies and there’s nothing I can do about it, or it becomes illegal to drive, or it gets wrecked in an accident.
I don’t ever want the new cars. I hate hate hate the stupid touch tablets they’ve put to control everything instead of physical knobs, and now this fucking crap where your car spies on you and rats you out to you insurance company.
They can pry my 2007 Tundra from my cold dead hands.
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2008 Crewmax SR5, bought new 12/2007. I feel exactly the same way.
Double Cab 4.7L SR5 (honestly no idea what SR5 even means) 8ft Bed. Bought used in 2011. Only 92k miles so far. Drove it from Philly to Anchorage and lived in Alaska for 3 years. Currently in Massachusetts. Respect.
Mine has like 165k. First vehicle I bought myself new. SR5 is just the middle package. They had the low trim as no named, SR5 then limited.
I got mine from Jim Barkley (brand new). Six hour drive. I drove down there in a 1999 Chevy S10 ZR-2 and traded it in and bought the Tundra. I was there like 30-45 min and I financed it with them. Jim Barkley is gone now, but that was such a pleasurable experience for a car buying experience.
Still love this truck!
Agreed.
I now need to root my Android and put a new OS so it stops telling Google where I am. I’m slightly afraid as I just want my phone to work when I need it.
I’m sure T-Mobile uses my location data for something too.
Everyone calls me paranoid for even just giving a shit about being spied on. Am I supposed to enjoy getting reamed by the rich?
Later model 3 but definitely lower-tech (has the touchscreen nonsense but no internet or anything) and I plan on running it as long as possible lol
I don’t know how to tell you but just because the Car can phone home with cellular - doesn’t mean you will see it as a free Internet Browser.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying tbh.
Anyway I don’t use their GPS and I don’t let it sync contacts or other info. I Bluetooth and run music off the phone locally or my Plex server. It’s from 2016 so I’m fairly certain it doesn’t have the same data back and forth you’re seeing in more current cars. I know it doesn’t collect audio, driving patterns, etc. which is what these new systems are all doing with wild TOS’s you have to agree to, as Mozilla showed us a few months ago.
The dumb infotainment center or whatever has been spotty so I’ve actually been using the aux more lately.
Point is whatever data it’s collecting and sending, which I’m not even entirely sure is happening in any meaningful way especially the way I use it, is not really at the same level we are seeing today.
Do you get updates over the air?
Not that I know of no. For instance, to activate their navigation, you need to buy a $200 SD card. You can’t do anything remotely AFAIK with this car. Even “apps” for listening require them to be installed on your phone so it’s not doing it on its own, it’s using your phone and app and data to make it happen. Without your smartphone it the “infotainment” center is just an info center with FM/AM radio.
I don’t think any of that stuff started until the Mazda Connect app or whatever it’s called. A decade ago (my car is like 8 years old now) a lot of cars were in the “blackberry” phase where it’s not really browsing the internet and everyone was sort of testing new stuff. Now car manufacturers have a lot more sense of how valuable all that data is and they’ve “figured it out,” much to our collective chagrin.
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