Gas Buddy PSA

[Jazzer]

Lawsuit: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to quietly track driving behavior

With connected cars and revenue-hungry apps, insurers are flush with data.

arstechnica.com

 

[JoshT]

Makes me glad that I dropped Allstate for auto insurance. Also glad that I never installed Allstate or any of those other apps on my phone.

 

[sgtsandman]

They all try to get you in some way. I have the Credit Karma app on my phone and they are constantly trying to get me to allow them to monitor my driving so I can potentially save on insurance and get a better credit score.

I tried that junk once with one of those plug in things that plug into your OBD II port. I did everything perfect enough for them but still got dinged because I had the nerve to go to work too early. So, it wouldn't have cost me anything since the "discount" would have negated the service charge but there would be something constantly snooping and monitoring every little move I made. Screw that. Even if it gave me a decent discount. I get tracked enough with my phone and companies snooping on my internet habits while I'm on the computer.

 

[John97]

Tracking is where it's at for everyone and everything now. We have GPS trackers in the company vehicles as do most companies. Allegedly it was just for an insurance discount but management quickly used it to micro-manage everyone, after of course denying that was going to happen.

I have Travelers and they gave a pretty solid discount of we installed a tracker app on our phones for 30 days to monitor driving habits and to make sure you weren't using your phone while driving. I went along with it because the discount is substantial and it was a one-time 30-day period. My wife works local, so he doesn't put on miles. My personal truck sits alot because I have a company work truck that racks 30-40K miles a year. This coming Thanksgiving will be six years and the odometer just cracked 38K miles (I bought it with 6K).

After 30 days, the app gets uninstalled. My agent told me one of the main reasons is they want to make sure people aren't doing Uber/Lyft/Doordash type stuff without reporting that they are doing so. This is one way to weed that out.

I installed the app on my personal phone and simply left it at home when I was working so it wouldn't record my work driving. Anyone who needed to reach me could do so via the work phone. Allegedly, you could tag trips in the app where you were a passenger and/or driving a different vehicle other than your own. I didn't trust that, so what I did worked perfectly.

This was four years ago. I'm about to renew our annual policy for a fifth year, of course pending the cost. If it's out of line, I'll shop again. But nobody has been able to come close enough to justify switching companies.