General Motors will pay $220 million to settle claims that it sold customers' driving data to brokers without their knowledge, closing out the last major piece of legal fallout from its discontinued Smart Driver program.
The agreement, announced Thursday, resolves a lawsuit brought by a coalition of attorneys general from 36 states and the District of Columbia. The states alleged GM and its OnStar subsidiary collected precise geolocation and driving-behavior data through Smart Driver — a feature marketed to parents tracking teen drivers and to adults monitoring their own habits — and sold that data to brokers, who in turn sold it to insurance companies. Some drivers told regulators their insurance rates rose as a result, without ever having knowingly agreed to share the underlying data.
The Third Settlement Over the Same Data
Thursday's deal is the third GM has reached over the practice. The Federal Trade Commission finalized its own order in January, banning GM and OnStar from sharing geolocation or driver-behavior data with third parties for five years. California separately reached a $12.75 million settlement with the automaker in May. GM discontinued Smart Driver across its entire lineup in 2024 after the data-sharing arrangement — first detailed in a New York Times investigation — became public.
What's new in the multistate settlement is a requirement that an independent third party assess GM's compliance with the privacy program it has since put in place, according to TechCrunch, giving regulators an outside check rather than relying on GM's own word. Under the terms common to all three settlements, GM must now obtain drivers' express consent before collecting or sharing their location and driving data, with narrow carve-outs for emergency services.
This agreement addresses Smart Driver, a product we ended in 2024, and reinforces steps we've taken to strengthen our privacy practices. Safer, more helpful and personalized experiences are enabled by connected vehicle data, and GM is committed to being clear about what information is used, how it's protected, and the choices customers have about what they share.
General Motors, statement
GM says it will no longer sell vehicle data that can be tied to an individual driver, their vehicle's location or how they drive, though it may still share anonymized, de-identified data with certain partners. The company has also rewritten its privacy policy and launched a consumer-facing Privacy Center.
The settlement lands as automakers push further into software-defined vehicles — GM itself is adding a personal AI assistant to OnStar — meaning cars are generating more data, not less, even as the legal guardrails around how that data can be monetized tighten. For an industry built on bundling connected services with new cars, the case is likely to be cited as the clearest marker yet of what regulators consider an acceptable way to ask for — and use — a driver's consent.
