Don’t worry. The next paragraph provided an email address where you can send reports of inaccuracies for them to review.

Yeah was about to say, my phone can't even tell whether I'm walking or cycling or taking a bus, I have exactly 0 hope it could tell whether I'm driving or not other than not being connected to my car's bluetooth which will be exactly what they are doing here of course!

Motion sensors don’t provide localization. Gps on cellphones are only really accurate to a few dozen meters.

You can couple gps and motion (and changes in gps location) to fudge it. Which is why when you diverge off the route navigation provides… it takes it a moment to figure it out. In the display, they “know” you’re on the road so it doesn’t have to be that accurate, they just guess what lane you’re in based on direction and such.

They’re certainly not going to know what seat you’re in.

I always place my phone in the center console anyways, there would be zero way to tell who is driving. Not that I'd ever install such an app...

I'll just put my phone in the trunk in the future.

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There was a piece on a fairly recent Smashing Security podcast that said that some car manufacturers are sending data to the insurance companies anyway.

https://www.smashingsecurity.com/363-stuck-streaming-sticks-tiktok-conspiracies-and-spying-cars/

UK you have the concept of black box car insurance that offered a substantial discount for having either a dedicated device installed into the car or an app on your phone that tracks a bunch of stats as you drive. It's as shit as it sounds as it marks you down for every little infringement such as driving at peak times because that's more dangerous. Get enough points and you can have your policy cancelled. In the UK there are knock on effects for ever having an insurance policy cancelled and you have to legally declare you did when asked.

While you can uninstall the app good luck making a claim if you don't have it installed with data for that journey. They'd also be pretty suss with no data over an extended period of a few months.

Worst part of these is that it's expensive to switch to a non black box policy when you can afford to as you get older and more experienced.

Don't do it. It's a bait and switch. You'll get the initial discount, then you brake hard one day because someone cuts you off.. and next thing you know your rate goes up. Also if your take a turn too fast. If you speed. If you accelerate hard (RPMs go above normal range).

I'll preface this by saying this shady shit gets all my hate.

It’s tempting to opt for telematics/black box insurance because of the initial cheaper prices but the privacy violations and potential downsides make it not worth it.

The overall problem here is that human psychology tends to frame this difference as a loss not a gain. Given the choice, people will see the cheaper option as the baseline, and then ask "can I afford to pay more for privacy?" instead of affirming "my privacy is not worth this discount."

Also, those of us that have paid for insurance without such a "discount", are likely keenly aware of the difference. For new drivers, from now to here on out, the lack of past experience presents a new baseline where this awfulness is normalized. Competition between insurance providers won't help us here since the "privacy free" option is still profitable and is enticing for new customers (read: younger, poorer). So it'll take some kind of law, collective action, or government intervention to make this go away.

Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record. [...] If I had spyware insurance they would’ve dinged me for it.

I think this is the bigger problem. If someone has the data an insurance company wants, you probably agreed to an EULA or signed something that makes their ownership, and its sale, legal. With the "yeah go ahead and use my data" option on the table, the machinery to do this without your knowledge is already in place. All the insurance provider has to do is buy the data from someone else. When the price is right, 1st party spyware isn't required at all.

These apps are so bad they have recorded people "hard braking" when they are home watching TV (just check the Play store for any of them and read the reviews)... there is no way this isn't ripe for abuse

I have believed for years that 2012 is the year that enshittification of everything truly began with windows 8, but 2013 seems to be where it started picking up the pace with everything else. (iOS 7 and YouTube with Google+ anyone?)

Found the guy who lives in a major city

Hark at Simeon Stylites here