GM Pays $12.75M to Settle OnStar Data Sales Allegations

General Motors has agreed to pay $12.75 million in civil penalties to settle allegations that it illegally sold detailed driving and personal data from hundreds of thousands of California OnStar subscribers to two data brokers without their knowledge or consent, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Friday.

The settlement, which requires court approval, stems from an investigation by Bonta's office, district attorneys from Los Angeles, Napa, San Francisco and Sonoma counties, and the California Privacy Protection Agency. It addresses claims that General Motors violated state privacy, false advertising and unfair competition laws by collecting data through its OnStar vehicle connectivity service from 2016 to 2024 and selling portions of it starting in 2020 to LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk Analytics.

The data included subscribers' names, phone numbers, home addresses, GPS locations of where they drove and parked, speeds traveled, instances of rapid acceleration and hard braking. Officials said General Motors assured customers that such information would be used only for OnStar services, such as navigation, roadside assistance and emergency response, and explicitly...