I mean this is dystopian as hell, right?
Part of the payment for this insurance service is the policy holder’s privacy?
They’re having to preempt that people are going to be paranoid that they’re going to be flagged as some kind of ne’er-do-well
The current state of auto insurance: shit that belongs on a shady Kickstarter from 2013
Submitted 5 months ago by ch00f@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/faf0b475-4bf4-4487-ae02-91e9018cfa54.jpeg
Comments
9point6@lemmy.world 5 months ago
eltrain123@lemmy.world 5 months ago
[deleted]Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
and we know for a fact that most of these companies have dogshit IT security, doubtless at most of them the janitor can sign in with his corporate ID and access customer data without anyone noticing.
B0rax@feddit.de 5 months ago
Why would you give gps access to your insurance company?
nogooduser@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Yup, this is why in my own vehicles I physically disconnect the system that sends these messages.
tankplanker@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
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.
hayes_@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
They have those in the US too.
Such an obvious scam. “Do this thing that might lower your rates.”*
- ~in 99.99% of cases rates increased~
lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
You can be the best defensive driver in the world but sometimes you’re just going to have to brake hard to avoid an object that may jump on you, dinging your driving score and raising your premiums.
Contrary to what this post’s image says, I’m reading online that these apps aren’t perfect at differentiating between who’s a driver and who’s a passenger.
Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record.
Last week a squirrel decided it didn’t want to live anymore and jumped into my way while I was driving. It was on an empty slow street at night so I was safely able brake hard to avoid killing the poor thing. If I had spyware insurance they would’ve dinged me for it.
StaySquared@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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).
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Competition between insurance providers won’t help us here since
the insurance firms are a cartel anyway and the price variance is more a consequence of your region and your vehicle than your carrier.
CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
It’s crazy how most of those programs work. The way my insurance handles it is way better. For example, no matter how bad you are at driving, they never raise the premiums above the normal rate, so it almost always makes sense to get the tracker from a finance perspective. (The only exception is that they will raise your rates if you drive farther in 6 months than you estimated on your initial application. The flip side is that they lower your rates if you don’t drive very much. I only drive about 1000 miles every 6 months, so my premium is really low.) They also have a Bluetooth device that stays in your car that your phone must be connected to in order for it to record trip data, and if you happen to be riding as the passenger in the car, the app has an option that allows you to clarify for each trip that you weren’t the driver. I was surprised to learn they aren’t all like that.
Crashumbc@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s a discount right up until something happens and they use that data against you.
Just like HR, insurance companies are not your friend.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You can be the best defensive driver in the world but sometimes you’re just going to have to brake hard to avoid an object that may jump on you, dinging your driving score and raising your premiums.
If you’re the best driver in the world, you don’t need to carry insurance because the lifetime expected spending on premiums is below the lifetime insurance payments. The only reason you carry insurance is if you’re not sure whether you’re the best driver in the world.
Once your insurance knows (better than you) where you rank as a driver, they will either refuse to cover you (because costs > revenues) or raise your rates until you fall into a high risk of changing carriers (because that’s where you maximize profits). The initial discount is simply a teaser rate, while the company collects more data. The real determination of your max tolerable premium is your personal income, which is set by the value of your vehicle.
The real secret to getting a lower insurance premium is to own a cheaper car (and therefore signal to your insurer that you have less money to spend on insurance).
Cornpop@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I would throw that app on a burner phone and leave it plugged in 24-7 in a desk.
exanime@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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
Nommer@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Wouldn’t be surprised at all if they just randomly select a few customers every once in a while to raise their premiums.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Hide it on a bus
csm10495@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Kind of sounds like a landline
Cornpop@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You must have one crazy landline if it lets you install apps on it.
ch00f@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I think these companies enforce compliance by hiding behind the fact that insurance fraud is a felony most places.
ikidd@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m waiting for an app that feeds their app fake data on that burner phone.
isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Lmao you’re giving me ideas
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Spoiler: That is absolutely going against your account.
pedz@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Jokes on them, I hate cars, don’t have one, and would never take an Uber.
DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 5 months ago
Found the guy who lives in a major city
pedz@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Meh. I have a cabin in the countryside 130 km away from my apartment and I can cycle the whole way, or take a coach with a foldable bike and pedal the 30 km left.
It’s actually in the region where I grew up so I have to get there frequently to see my family. It’s a hassle sometimes but it’s only because my government can’t adequately fund and maintain a decent transit network.
I also bike to national parks nearby, and sometimes haul my inflatable kayak with a bike trailer.
People overestimate distances and think the country side justifies a car but it’s usually just excuses. I did move in a big city eventually but I lived in small towns and cities for a decade before that. I still hated cars and didn’t have one.
For example, my mother lives on a rural road outside a village of less than 2000 people. And she works in the next town that is 7 km away. Meanwhile I live in a city and work in the same city but I have to bike 9 km to get to work.
So sometimes distances are shorter in smaller cities and towns but people still insist they need a car. People will give any excuse to use their car. It’s like cocain.
Also, here Uber is only available in major cities where it’s competing with public transit anyway. AFAIK you can’t take an Uber to a small town or a rural road.
br3d@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Hark at Simeon Stylites here
pedz@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I prefer to be compared to Diogenes of Sinope, thank you.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t install insurance apps. I also usually run with gps test running showing me in the middle of a local lake.
Good luck state farm we are all rooting for you. /s
Psych@lemmy.sdf.org 5 months ago
OP this is gonna break your mind but you can “uninstall” apps
ch00f@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, but good luck filing a claim when you haven’t logged in for months.
DogWater@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There’s a number on your insurance card lol
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sometimes. This assumes that the phone companies aren’t selling the data to insurance companies.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Me, on the phone with my insurance company: “No, you don’t understand! It wasn’t me driving, we just have very similar telematics!”
The insurance company: “Beep boop! I am a computer! Talking to me automatically raises your insurance premium another 5%”
StaySquared@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Car tech today spies on you. Manufacture of said car collects that date and then sells it to lexisnexis, who then sells that data to auto insurance companies. Which in turn analyze the data and determine to upcharge you for your driving.
They’ll never lower the rate, they’ll just keep raising it until you finally become a pirate and drive dirty.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 5 months ago
They’ll never lower the rate
This is only true if the insurance companies are colluding and are actively stopping anyone else entering the market.
If one companies rates are too high then customers will go elsewhere.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
If you undercut your opponents too much then you are just leaving money on the table and are susceptible to being bought out
StaySquared@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Oh for sure you’ll have to move to another insurance company to hopefully get a better rate. But your current insurance company, never ever lowers the rate unless you had tickets in the recent past and those tickets fell off your record. That’s the only time I’ve ever experience my rate lower and it was roughly $40 less per month.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 5 months ago
The cost of entering the market is so high that it’s functionally impossible for any new carriers to enter the market without having major investor backing. The only way to make the cost reasonable for most people is to have a very large risk pool; you can’t get a large risk pool without having a lot of people signing up, which means already having the infrastructure in place to handle that kind of numbers.
If you insure, say, 1000 people, and 999 of them are incredibly safe drives, and one of them drives drunk and kills a busload of school children–costing the insurer a “mere” $1,000,000 because that was the limit of their liability–that means that every person in that risk pool needs to pay $1000 annually for that single accident, and that’s just to break completely even, without accounting for any of the overhead involved in running an insurance company.
Resol@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Of course it’s 2013. It’s always 2013.
FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
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?)
Resol@lemmy.world 5 months ago
People thought the world was gonna end that year.
It didn’t, but everything did turn to shit.
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This should 100% be illegal.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Enough to tell if you’re the one driving lol
cm0002@lemmy.world 5 months ago
(X) Doubt
ch00f@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Don’t worry. The next paragraph provided an email address where you can send reports of inaccuracies for them to review.
fiercekitten@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Jfc my heart goes out to everyone who is financially coerced into getting one of these policies. This is not okay. People who have a voice need to push back on this. Your own devices should never be used against you.
Carighan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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!
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Oh good, then I’m safe. My phone doesn’t connect to my car’s Bluetooth unless is configure it every drive.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
iPhone eh?
jaxxed@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I think that we are talking about insurance policies that make you install an app on your phone directly. The app publishes directly to the Internet.
minibyte@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Damn thing won’t even track steps when I’ve got a purse on.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 5 months ago
doesn’t need to, nor does localisation matter for this topic.
it’s a matter of centrifugal forces on turns.
Hubi@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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…
RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
You would do that in a taxi?
NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’ll just put my phone in the trunk in the future.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 5 months ago
What if my phone is sitting in the cup holder in the center console…
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 5 months ago
doubt, but I’d believe it.
If we can tell if we are in the front or backseat due to how it feels when you go around corners and such, so can your phone.
driver side vs passenger would be trickier, but if the question is front or back, then I’d believe it.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
But this kind of thing is ripe for unintended consequences at best and flat out bad data at worst.
When I drive I put my phone in the center so I can see the map. If me and my passenger’s phones are in the center, who is marked as driving when I get into an accident?
From there, why stop at one phone? Let’s put several phones in the back seat, including mine. Hell, let’s have a burner phone that I use only for driving that has a throw away account. Or let’s go back to old fashioned maps and GPS devices while our phones are turned off. Meanwhile, at home, I’ve spun up a virtual device where it is very peacefully driving a route. Perfectly. Then I have another virtual device that is driving a different route on the other side of the world driving erratically.
These companies are forgetting that the data from phones are data from devices, not people. If you’re going to spy on me, I’m going to make you fucking earn it.
variants@possumpat.io 5 months ago
Second rule in the book of the road is driver controls the stereo. Now more cars you have to plug in or connect Bluetooth so it’s safe to assume that if you’re connected to a car stereo you’re the driver
SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Not sure if this is a joke. For years my phone was the only one paired with the Bluetooth on my wife’s car as I like to play music when I drive it but she couldn’t be bothered to mess with it and listens to the radio. That doesn’t mean that I am usually the driver in the car though as she usually drives it. It was paired for the few times she wasn’t in the car and I had to use it.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I love how there’s all these science and software experts who think this is impossible, when it is clearly very easily possible. It’s not a question of if it’s good (it isn’t) or if they should (they shouldn’t).
Hiding your heads in the sand and collectively saying they can’t - in a pro-privacy group - is insane. It’s like reading about how you can hack an air gapped computer and having a bunch of Amish say it’s impossible.
Maybe figure out how they are first, then talk about what to do about it. But this collective “nuh-uh!” is nuts.
cm0002@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Nobody said it’s impossible, its not possible with the consumer grade hardware in your phone and what an app will have access to. Sometimes it even has issues just figuring out if you’ve turned your phone to landscape or not
Also, nobody said they weren’t going to try, the claim that they can do it with any degree of accuracy is BS