Class Action Claims General Motors, OnStar Shared Driving Behavior Data Without Consent

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A Florida resident claims in a proposed class action lawsuit that General Motors (GM) and OnStar illegally reported his driving behavior data to co-defendant LexisNexis without consent.

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The 28-page lawsuit says that after the plaintiff bought a new Cadillac XT6 from a Florida dealership in 2021, he downloaded the myCadillac app and opted not to enroll in OnStar Smart Driver, an optional feature that provides customers with certain GM vehicles insights into their driving behavior.

According to OnStar’s Smart Driver FAQs, the company claims it does not collect information about driving behavior unless a customer enrolls in the service and provides their explicit consent, the case relays. The plaintiff contends that he never enrolled in OnStar Smart Driver, which an OnStar representative has confirmed, and never gave the company permission to track or share his driving data. What’s more, the plaintiff’s online GM profile states that his vehicle is “not connected” to an OnStar account, the suit shares.

However, after several insurance providers denied the plaintiff’s attempts to purchase car insurance in December 2023, Liberty Mutual informed the man that his rejection was due to negative driving information in his LexisNexis report, the complaint says.

The plaintiff’s LexisNexis report, which he subsequently requested and received a few weeks later, had 258 recorded driving events allegedly sent through OnStar, each of which included details like when a trip started and ended, if any acceleration, hard brake or high-speed events occurred, and the distance traveled, the complaint contends.

The filing says that although this information harmed the plaintiff’s ability to purchase car insurance and caused his rates to nearly double, the data metrics included in his consumer report are “so decontextualized” that they fail to provide an accurate representation of his driving abilities.

In the following weeks, the plaintiff contacted LexisNexis, GM, OnStar and Cadillac, but none could clarify how his driving data had been shared without his knowledge or consent, the complaint claims.

The plaintiff alleges GM and OnStar has misled consumers about their data-sharing policies, and that they began sharing his data when he downloaded the myCadillac app.

Per the filing, OnStar and GM have sent driving data about “millions” of consumers to LexisNexis without consent, in violation of Florida law.

“Furthermore, all [of the defendants] should have realized that sharing and publishing this information, without any context, inaccurately portrays consumers’ driving experience,” the case says, claiming that LexisNexis’s failure to ensure the “maximum possible accuracy” of the consumer data it reports is illegal under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone who had their car’s driving data—also referred to as telematics—collected and shared with LexisNexis without their consent within the past four years.

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