Consumer Reports: Letting Your Car Insurance Company Monitor Your Driving With Telematics Can Save You Money but Raises Privacy Concerns 

Before signing up for a telematics program (or any program that collects your personal data), John Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, suggests looking closely at your insurer’s website to learn which data points the company collects and how that data is used. He also recommends calling the insurer to ask specific questions (more on that below). Considering the impenetrability of the legal text in most data privacy agreements, he says it’s likely you’ll need to call for clarification.  

“I’m a privacy attorney who looks at these policies all the time, and oftentimes even I have a fuzzy understanding of what’s in these documents,” he said. “What you want to find out is that the company collecting the data is taking as little of it as possible in order to provide a service. That’s as true of an insurance company as it is of any company that uses your data.” 

… “There is always a risk that your data could be siphoned off and made available to other companies, and we see such a steady drumbeat of stories about data breaches,” Davisson says. 

… “You might be as good a driver as someone the next town over, but if the insurer’s risk model assigns you to a higher risk category based on where you live, the difference in insurance premiums could be unfair,” says Davisson. 

Read more here.