The state of Texas sued Allstate on Monday, accusing the insurer of illegally monitoring drivers via their telephones via a subsidiary referred to as Arity, which claims to have “the most important database of driving habits on the planet.”
“Allstate and Arity paid cell apps tens of millions of {dollars} to put in Allstate’s monitoring software program,” Ken Paxton, the state’s legal professional normal, mentioned in statement. “The private data of tens of millions of People was offered to insurance coverage corporations with out their information or consent in violation of the legislation. Texans deserve higher, and we are going to maintain all of those corporations accountable.”
Allstate and Arity didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The New York Times reported final yr, details about individuals’s driving habits was collected via smartphone apps, comparable to Life360 and GasBuddy, and offered to Arity, an analytics firm based by Allstate. Arity was capable of analyze knowledge collected from individuals’s smartphones to find out how typically they pace, brake instantly, or get distracted by their telephones whereas driving. It makes use of this evaluation to present them driving threat scores.
“Insurers then used that person’s knowledge to justify growing their auto insurance coverage premiums, denying them protection or eradicating them from protection,” in line with the legal professional normal’s lawsuit, which accuses the businesses of violating state privateness legal guidelines.
Based on the state lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County District Courtroom, Arity has the placement, motion and driving knowledge of greater than 45 million People who “had been by no means knowledgeable of, nor consented to” the continued assortment and sale of their knowledge.
Texas also sued General Motors final yr on the gathering of client driving knowledge, following a report by The Times that GM and different automakers offered individuals’s driving data to the insurance coverage trade.
