What's the price for your privacy?
"Privacy is the price for lowering car insurance; Insurers test devices to monitor driving" by Todd Wallack |
Globe Staff, September 16, 2012
Auto insurance companies are
increasingly offering drivers a tantalizing deal: Sharply lower rates in
exchange for permission to install a device that tracks when, where, or
how you drive.
More than a dozen insurers, seeking better ways to reward safe
drivers and weed out riskier ones, are testing or marketing technologies
to monitor driving habits, betting that customers are willing to give
up privacy for the promise of lower bills. The companies have signed up
1.5 million US customers, according to industry analysts, and that total
could easily rise into the tens of millions within the next five years.
“You are seeing the front wave of what can only be
described as a momentous change,” said Robin Harbage of Towers Watson, a
global consulting firm based in New York....
Privacy advocates, however, worry that the proliferation of
usage-based insurance could open up a Pandora’s box of concerns,
possibly leading companies to require all customers to install
monitoring devices to obtain insurance. Worse, some fear the devices
could someday be equipped to track drivers’ every movement or eavesdrop
on conversations — data that could eventually be sold or obtained by law
enforcement authorities.
Remember when they told you the cameras were only to catch terrorists? Now they are being used to identify traffic violations. I'm sure there is a lesson there somewhere.
“People don’t like being tracked, especially if they don’t know who
can get the data,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights advocacy group based in
San Francisco, which opposed efforts several years ago to allow
insurance firms to use such devices in California. “There is no good
insurance reason to change the status quo.”
Insurers, of course, have long consulted official government driving
records — typically tacking on surcharges when customers rack up
accidents, speeding tickets, or other infractions. But insurance
executives say the new technology provides far more detailed information
on how customers drive, enabling them to better assess risk, allowing
them to offer deals to the safest drivers and sometimes snatch them away
from rival insurers....
Snapshot confirm[s] that customers don’t drive between midnight and 4 a.m., when it is harder to see and
drivers are more likely to be fatigued or intoxicated. Drivers don’t pay
for the gadget, which costs the company roughly $75 to $100, and can
try it for 30 days, even if they aren’t customers. Progressive said 70
percent of drivers who order the device qualify for some sort of
discount....
In Illinois and Utah, State Farm uses a wireless system that captures
even more data, including mileage, acceleration, braking, speed of
turns, time of day the car is driven, and speeding over 80 miles per
hour. The device also tracks location of cars to make sure customers are
garaging cars in the area listed on their applications....
In New Hampshire,
Kristine Bell, an agent at Portsmouth Atlantic Insurance in Portsmouth,
said a few dozen customers at her company have signed up for
Progressive's monitoring device, but the program hasn’t been widely
accepted yet....
Thus the agenda gets a front-page shove.
--more--"
