Posting this here and not in GD for a reason. Recently bought my first vehicle with connectivity, a 2020 F150. Yeah, it's nice to be able to see it's location, check tire pressure, start it, etc from my phone. Are these vehicles telling insurance companies, or LexisNexis, about our speeding habits so they can increase rates or drop people? I leave for work about 0400 so I tend to drive faster than normal then. So far I've been hesitant to take the truck in for this reason. Thanks for any serious answers.

There was just a thread on this in GD about a week ago.

The telematics data gets sold to a third party, who then sells the data to insurance companies,
and yes, the truck is spying on you. Right now Ford says it's opt-in and you can allegedly turn it
off.

I got a new vehicle near the end of February, and ironically I just finished disabling telematics
yesterday after the bypass cable I needed came in. At least with my vehicle (Subaru) killing the
telematics does nothing but disable certain features, apparently doing so in a Ford triggers a
bunch of DTCs.

https://risk.lexisnexis.com/about-us/press-room/press-release/20210909-ford-ubi
The above is the opt-in for usage based insurance. Note that people are reporting they're taking delivery of
Ford vehicles and finding them already opted-in and have to take steps to opt-out in the vehicle settings.

Relevant thread on the F150 forum https://www.f150forum.com/f129/car-manufacturers-selling-your-driving-data-insurance-companies-555504/

Thanks! Glad I asked. I'll see if I can turn it off in the settings. It's the non-connected WRX only for commuting until I can figure it out. I guess that car will get a rebuild instead of being replaced when it's time. I typically do not accelerate or brake hard, but am well above the speed limit in certain areas.

Fine to rebuild, but (for now at least) quite a few new models, even the ones where telematics is standard, can
have them disabled. The dealer won't do it and will immediately start to mention voiding warranty etc -- mine did --
and I just said it was on them under Magnason-Moss to prove that disabled telematics broke the car, and that's
super unlikely.

It did take the better part of a day for me to silence my Subaru, but that's way less than a rebuild. I unplugged every
single cable to the telematics module, and in a few days the backup battery should be pretty dead as it tries to ping
the cell network through a disconnected antenna. It was a fair bit of work getting to the module but at least it was
semi-accessible, I know some vehicles make it almost impossible, and hopefully I don't need to buy another car
for a long time, but if there's a next time making sure I can kill the spying easily will be the first filter when I look.

Here's the thread in GD from a couple weeks ago discussing this as well.

I don't think they can report on you specifically.
that is your data will be aggregated and not connected directly to you.
because if they did do that, I know my insurance would have pitched a fit by now.
I do rapid acceleration and high speed all the time. no hard braking normally, but there have been a few stops that tripped the dash cam g sensor.

It's not aggregated, but it identifies the vehicle specifically, not the driver.

From the linked article in the linked thread:



This isn't secret if you dig even just a little bit into it, and there's multiple companies gathering the data
from multiple sources (the automaker's telematics, insurance companies' own telematics used for usage-based
policies, and other suppliers.) The data from someone like Google gathered from cell phones might be aggregated,
but that's not what this telematics based data is about, it's very specific to a single vehicle.

I saw a YT video recently where C8 vette and Camaro owners are looking at a class-action lawsuit over the data collection and it being fed to Insurance companies.....so it's a thing for sure.

Oh it is.....GM owners are irate.  My car deosn't have an active onstar & I opted out by phone the connected services.  But yes the other data that is collected was still active & not 1 word from gm or onstar about it.   I had to opt out manually again for this specifically.