I canceled the OnStar subscription on my new GMC vehicle today after receiving an email from the company about their new terms and conditions. While most people, I imagine, would hit the delete button when receiving something as exciting as new terms and conditions, being the nerd sort, I decided to have a personal drooling session and read it instead. I’m glad I did. OnStar’s latest T&C has some very unsettling updates to it, which include the ability to sell your personal GPS location information, speed, safety belt usage, and other information to third parties, including law enforcement. To add insult to a slap in the face, the company insists they will continue even after you cancel your service, unless you specifically shut down the data connection to the vehicle after canceling.
Not surprisingly, I even had to scrub the link as it included my vehicle’s VIN number, to tell OnStar just what customers were actually reading the new terms and conditions. Your contact information, billing information, etc. is collected. Nobody cares about tire pressure and crash information being collected – after all, that’s what OnStar is there for. Toward the end, you’ll read about how GPS data is collected, including vehicle speed and seat belt status. Again, in an emergency, this is very useful and most customers want an emergency services business to collect this information – when necessary. And the old 2010 terms and conditions only allowed OnStar to collect this information for legitimate purposes, such as recovering a stolen vehicle, or when needed to provide other OnStar services to customers on demand. As you scroll down the list of information collected, you see that once you get past important emergency services (what we pay OnStar for), OnStar now has given themselves the right to also use this information to stuff their pockets.
OnStar has granted themselves the right to collecting and selling this personal information for any purpose, at any time, provided that following collection of such location and speed information identifiable to your Vehicle, it is shared only on an anonymized basis.” – This provides carte blanche authority for OnStar to now track and collect information about your current GPS position and speed any time and anywhere, instead of only in the rare, limited circumstances the old contract outlined.
OnStar’s new T&C continues, explaining that part of the company may at some point be sold, and all of your information with it. It sounds as though OnStar is poising part of their analytics department to be purchased by a large data warehousing company, such as a Google, or perhaps even an Apple. Do you trust such companies with unfettered access to the entire GPS history of your vehicle?
This is too shady, especially for a company that you’re supposed to trust your family to. My vehicle’s location is my life, it’s where I go on a daily basis. It’s private. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have to have a company like OnStar steal my personal and private life just to purchase an emergency response service. Taking my private life and selling it to third party advertisers, law enforcement, and God knows who else is morally inept. Shame on you, OnStar. You disgust me.
I guess we’ll now have to hear from the “better safe than sorry” bunch. Or the “if you have nothing to hide, then”…morans. Just go get yourself micro chipped and please leave the rest of us alone.
Yep, but I saw this coming a long time ago. I won’t buy a car if it is too new, i-e any satellite or gps uplink at all. Just don’t feel like paying for something i not only will not use, but will have a strong desire to tear out.
“shared only on an anonymized basis” Meaning they share the info but not whose info it is… this is only valuable to aggregators looking for trends etc.. If they truely annonmize it then who the f cares… Stop with the conspiracy theories..
Too sophisticated for what I drive. I have a ’98 Jeep Wrangler. I don’t even have power windows.
Suckers.
Do any of these things have a physical switch somewhere that completely shuts off the GPS?
Otherwise, without such a switch, there can be no guarantee that the data won’t still be collected – regardless of “opt out” or any other nonsense.
I’d suggest a letter to OnStar services, along the lines of John Dvorak’s T.O.S.:
“OnStar may not sell, rent, loan, give away, publicly or privately display, or provide my personal vehicular records and/or data to any party or entity without my express written permission. Such permission must be obtained by in person the CEO of General Motors, but not by other person, agent or assign, and must include a karaoke performance of “Sweet Caroline” while wearing only a mankini (regardless of weather conditions). These terms are agreed to by GM and OnStar without any further disclosure, discussion or negotiation. Just because I say so. So there. And if GM or OnStar, their agents or assigns, mess this up, they have to fix the data disclosure, pay me US$10million, and the CEO has to perform an entire Neil Diamond concert, wearing only a fig leaf, on national broadcast television. Nyah.”
I’m not a privacy/anonymity freak, usually quite open and unprivate. Don’t know why this rankles me the way it does. Perhaps because I am paying for one service that I actually use while it provides a separate income stream/service that has nothing to do with what I am paying for.
Not exactly “bait and switch” or “can’t serve two Masters” or Govenor Perry’s Opt out vs Opt In “Big Brother” environment we are morphing into?
Can’t tell, but something rankles me. I’d have to “really want” OnStar services to put up with it. Don’t know if I do.
I hope #2 doesn’t expect paranoids to comprehend legal terms of anonymity. Or the right to sue if violated – which includes the right of discovery.
That requires backbone to match mouth.
McCullough,
What’s wrong??
All you have to do is:
A) Sit down,
B) Shut Up, and
C) Be a good little slave!
What’s the original article source?
Didn’t sign up after the 30 day free trial but I think I may want to look into how to physically disable the transmitter now.
@Maddog1068 … I hope you remember that trivial experiment some “conspiracy theorists” did by finding exact person behind “anonymized” Google cookies data… Note how much more vast and non-specific is general Web’ information space vs. quite narrowed space of finite set of cars and coordinates (that likely repeat day-to-day). Sharing it in such way protects OnStar on paper and in front of the Legal system. Making the whole thing worse, not safer (you can’t even sue them if something unpleasant happens).
The problem is that if you’re selling GPS history information, it’s *really* hard to anonymize it. If it’s parked at a given latitude/longitude every night, and that latitude/longitude corresponds to 391 Grove Boulevard, it’s not too hard to figure out who the owner is.
In fact, anonymizing data so it can’t be de-anonymised is *really* hard – go look at the mess that AOL had when they released a bunch of “anonymised” data for researchers several years. And the analytics guys have gotten a *lot* better since then…
Jesus Fucking Christ.
What is happening to this fucking society?
#12 Faxon – “Jesus Fucking Christ.
What is happening to this fucking society?”
Your Congressperson(s), Senator(s, President(s) and banker(s) have stolen it.
we started down this road when Telemarketing companies started demanding blood tests from employees.
#12:
Most americans and the west in general are little more sadists with an authority fetish. They desperately need someone to take their money and tell them what to do. Anyone who just wants to be left alone is some kind of pervert to them.
Hummm Jesus Fucking Christ…now, that I’d like to see. Talk about flexible !
I refuse to own a car with a chip in the key, much less On Star. I’m not too happy with the computer controlled spark and fuel system, either as they can theoretically be disabled from afar.
Points, condenser, a carburetor is better from a privacy standpoint, but impractical in other ways.
If you being sued (or tried) for an accident, can the lawyers subpoena the OnStar data for the time of the wreck?
I can think of all kinds of incriminating evidence that OnStar could have on you. Evidence of infidelity, for instance. Your ex’s lawyers would LOVE to see the GPS data of where you’ve been driving on your way home from work.
Perhaps a link between the On-Star remotely actuated microphone and Attack Watch could be useful.
Save time in reporting yourself for crime think.
#15 – You mean “masochists.”
Sheesh, get your S&M terms right, son.
#19
No, it’s actually both. They want to be controlled and abused but when they come across someone who doesn’t want to be treated that way, they would love to dole out the punishment. Or at least watch it being done.
GregAllen, yes such data can be collected. Insurance companies collect data from black boxes all the time.
Shut up and be a good consumer of goods and services.
Also, this is to protect the children and kill towel heads taking our oil.
# 17 GregAllen said, “can the lawyers subpoena the OnStar data…” Of course, they can. And will! And, under the wonderful Patriot Act, law enforcement will have a steady stream of data pouring into the NSA.
Expect to see a similar change in the TOS of your telephone and probably lots of the apps you put on your smart phone. (It may have already happened – did you actually read that last email from AT&Torture?) A bill has been introduced to the House making it illegal to collect this information without your permission and even requiring law enforcement to obtain a rare thing called “a warrant” to violate your privacy. Ergo, accept the new TOS, give up all hope of privacy or back out of the 21st century.
The best beauty of it, the dummies pay multiple times and ways; On-Star for “the service”, GM for the install and parts and double taxes to the Gov as they collect percentages on the money you pay GM and On-Star.
Isn’t America, just great? People paying Apple, AT&Terror and the Gov (NSA, CIA, DoD, FBI….) to toss your privacy to the winds of evil.
Who works for who?
Shut up already America; your no longer the proud Americans of old (the kind that stood up against foreign countries in the 1700’s & 1812, hostile slave holding forces in 1860’s, greedy Banks & Corporations in the 1930’s, over seas genocidal maniacs in the 1940’s and our own Gov in the 1960’s.
Today’s America, in the 1980s fought with blood and treasure for higher oil company profits, ever more expensive gas guzzling hummers in the 1990’s and almost the worlds slowest internet access in the 2000’s!
Go America, fight, fight, fight!
Today’s American doesn’t stand on any principle; excepting maybe, what the Koch Brothers or their latest TV commercial or televangelist, tells us dip-shit Americans what is the good to stand up for and what is the bad to fight against!
Today’s Americans are indentured to Chinese financed Wall-Street debt, in servitude to our Gov Homeland security over-lords, in fear of keeping our corporate jobs, shrills for mass media and too stupid or worn down by consuming ever increasing quantities of high-fructose syrup to know better.
#7 The problem is paranoids think. They are aware that all sorts of anonymous information turns out not to be anonymous in practice including information like SS numbers and credit card information.
On the other hand many other people are trusting. They are more likely to get victimized.
My vehicle of choice has GPS, wifi cameras and a whole lot of technological geegaws.
I ride a bus.
Why?
Because I can.
Is there a switch somehow that from space they can disable your car if you don’t make a car payment or payments
#24–noname==I’m drunk off my ass right now after 6 beers because I lost track of cooking up some potatoes, eggs, and patrami====but I gotta say, I like what you say.
Illl have to wait until tomorrow to read it again to see if it makes sense===But I’m sure it will.
Bravo, yea verily, and as always VOTE ALL “NO NEW TAXES” DOGMATIC CORRUPT SHILLS OUT OF OFFICE.
The link to the article is broken. Right now it says:
http://dvorak.org/blog/2011/09/21/on-stars-new-orwellian-terms-and-conditions/%3Ca%20href=
[fixed – thanks! ed.]
#27
No, but if you write anything critical – or not – as comments to a posting concerning the system in question; your car will wake up running the engine to drive down the road and cause a crash close to where live. It will be very early in the morning with nobody around to testify whether you were in the car or not…
You may wonder why I dare to write this? I live in Europe. We are a bit behind and our cars do not keep an eye on us – yet…