Iowa accuses General Motors of not disclosing OnStar data sharing

DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — General Motors failed to disclose to car buyers that driving data collected by the automaker’s OnStar program installed in its vehicles is sold to auto insurance companies and other third parties without consumers’ awareness or consent, Iowa claimed Thursday.

OnStar is pitched by GM as improving driver safety by collecting a wide array of data, including speed, seatbelt usage, driving habits and location.

What consumers are not clearly informed of, the Iowa attorney general claims, is that their vehicles were “secretly spying on them,” and this data was sold to third-party data brokers who sold it to insurance companies that used the data to raise rates, deny coverage or cancel policies.

Iowa said in its complaint filed in state court that since model year 2015, GM’s data collection systems have been installed in almost all new GM vehicles, including more than 186,000 vehicles GM sold in Iowa.

“Iowans deserve to know who is collecting, using, and selling their data and why,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a Thursday statement. “They should also be able to trust a company as large and well-known as General Motors. GM was not honest with Iowans who were spending hard-earned money to buy a dependable vehicle — and they did it to make more money. That is wrong, and our office is holding them accountable.”

Iowa claims that General Motors and its OnStar subsidiary violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act with “unfair practices, deceptions, frauds, false pretenses, false promises, misrepresentations, as well as concealed, suppressed, and omitted material facts.”

The state claims GM “harvested Iowans’ driving data from sensors, cameras, speakers, and microphones that GM installed in its vehicles. These sensors revealed how fast GM customers drove, how quickly they accelerated, how hard they braked, how long they drove, and more. GM profited handsomely from selling this driving data, resulting in millions of dollars of revenue for the company.”

One of GM’s large data brokers, the state said in its complaint, partnered with the Chinese data broker Jing You, “raising the risk of commingling Americans’ driving data with Chinese data brokers.”

Iowa seeks financial penalties against GM for consumer fraud violations, an order that it delete and destroy all driving data obtained prior to the entry a judgment, including any driving data in the possession of any third party, reimbursement to all Iowa consumers who suffered a loss as a result of the defendants’ acts, and an order that defendants disgorge gross receipts obtained as a result of unlawful acts and practices.

“GM is committed to protecting consumers’ privacy,” a GM spokesperson said in a statement. The company also noted that it has reached a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to address privacy concerns about GM’s now-discontinued Smart Driver program. The Smart Driver program is the subject of Iowa’s suit.

“Although Smart Driver was created to promote safer driving behavior, we ended that program due to customer feedback,” the company said in a January 2025 statement. “Last year, we discontinued Smart Driver across all GM vehicles, unenrolled all customers, and ended our third-party telematics relationships” with two third parties it had shared data with.

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