General Motors has agreed to pay $220 million to 36 attorneys general over its OnStar Smart Driver program. The states allege GM collected the driving habits of more than 10 million owners and sold them to data brokers, who sold them on to insurers. If you were one of those drivers, here’s the part that matters: none of the money is set aside for you, and nobody has explained how GM’s own app came to tell hundreds of thousands of people they weren’t enrolled.
The allegations
The Connecticut attorney general puts the number of affected Americans at more than 10,283,000, including at least 123,143 people in Connecticut. According to the states, GM enrolled drivers in Smart Driver from 2016 to 2024. It then sold their data to brokers under contracts saying the data was meant for insurance products.
The data was granular: how often a person drove, when each trip started and ended, hard braking, rapid acceleration and speeding, plus location. The states say insurers used it to set or change premiums.
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According to the release, most drivers were signed up at the dealership, often in the same step as OnStar activation. The states allege dealership employees accepted the terms for customers without their consent. Salespeople were reportedly paid bonuses tied partly to enrollments, and dealerships were ranked by enrollment numbers. Picture the pay plan as the states tell it: more enrollments, bigger bonus. Now picture the buyer at the desk who was never asked.
The app that said “not enrolled”
The most damaging allegation concerns GM’s own software. Per the Maryland attorney general, the OnStar app told more than 370,000 drivers they were not enrolled in Smart Driver when they actually were. GM was collecting and selling their data the whole time. The states say GM later unenrolled those drivers without telling them about the error, and their data stayed with the brokers and insurers.
A suspicious owner who checked the app did exactly the right thing and was told everything was fine. The deal those drivers got was all downside: they never saw their own driving scores, but insurers could buy them.
What GM has to change
The settlement requires GM to get “affirmative express consent” before collecting or disclosing driving and location data. GM also has to limit what it collects, run a full privacy program with internal and external assessments, and add dealership oversight and training so buyers can’t be enrolled without agreeing.
This sits on top of the FTC’s final order from January. That order bars GM from sharing geolocation and driver-behavior data with consumer reporting agencies for five years. It also runs for 20 years and requires that consumers can request their data, ask for it to be deleted, and turn off precise location tracking where the hardware allows. Connecticut notes that the federal deal involved no money. The states have now attached a price.
The math
Divide $220 million by 10.28 million drivers and you get about $21 each. But that’s a theoretical figure, because the money goes to state treasuries. Maryland gets $7.33 million and Connecticut gets more than $6 million. Neither release describes a claims process or any payments to drivers.
Not every state signed on. Texas isn’t on the coalition list. It filed its own lawsuit in 2024, alleging GM collected data from most 2015-and-newer vehicles and sold it to at least two companies that produced “Driving Scores” for insurers. Connecticut also says several consumer class actions are still pending. For individual owners, those cases are the only route to actual compensation.
What owners can do
If you owned or drove a GM vehicle with OnStar between 2016 and 2024, treat yourself as possibly affected, especially if the app once told you that you weren’t enrolled.
Start with the brokers: federal law entitles you to a free annual disclosure from nationwide specialty consumer reporting agencies, which includes the companies that build insurance risk reports. Look for trip-level driving entries tied to your vehicle.
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Then dig out old insurance renewals. When an insurer takes adverse action based on a consumer report, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires a notice naming the reporting agency. If a rate jump arrived with a letter like that, keep it. It’s evidence.
GM’s privacy request channel lets you request or delete your data too, and the phone line is 1-866-697-7482.
Why it matters beyond GM
Your car reports on you all day, and someone will pay for the report. These consent rules make the dealership the place where you approve or refuse data sharing. Read the data screens before you tap anything. Did your dealer ever show you one?