GM will pay $220 million to settle claims it sold drivers' location and driving data without consent. Here is who is affected and what to watch for.
General Motors has agreed to pay $220 million to settle claims from 36 states that it sold drivers' data without their consent. The data came from Smart Driver, a program inside GM's OnStar service. It tracked how people drove and where they went. Smart Driver is now closed.
OnStar is GM's subscription safety service. It offers crash response and turn-by-turn directions. Until 2024, OnStar users could join Smart Driver to earn insurance discounts by sharing their driving results.
According to the Washington State Attorney General's Office, an investigation found that GM sold driver behavior and location data to data brokers. Those are companies that buy and resell personal information. Drivers had not agreed to this, and GM did not clearly tell them whether their driving was being tracked.
The most troubling detail involves more than 370,000 drivers. They were told they were not enrolled in Smart Driver. In fact, they had been enrolled and later unenrolled, and their data kept being sold to brokers and insurance companies.
The case touches owners of Chevrolet, GMC, Buick and Cadillac vehicles who used OnStar, Smart Driver, or apps such as myChevrolet and myGMC. If you never used any of these, this case is less likely to involve you. But the unenrollment problem shows that a screen saying you are out may not tell the whole story.
Driving data is valuable. The New York Times has reported that insurance companies buy this kind of data and use it to raise premiums for some drivers. A similar case came up in 2025, when Toyota was sued for sharing drivers' data with Progressive Insurance. GM is not the only company in this position.
The alert box above lists the steps. In short, check what your car and its app share, be careful with any program that scores your driving, and ask your insurer what it knows about you.
As part of the deal, GM must join a data privacy program that limits the driving data it collects. It must also train dealerships so customers are not signed up for data collection without consent.
Some things are not known yet. The material does not say whether affected drivers will receive any money. It also does not say whether any driver's insurance rate went up because of this data. Anyone who sees an unexplained increase at renewal can ask the insurer why.
Check what your car and its app share, and ask your insurer what driving data it holds before your next renewal.
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