- Allstate and Arity have been hit with a class action lawsuit, following hot on the heels of a lawsuit from the State of Texas.
- The latest suit says the companies collected data on more than 45 million Americans without their consent.
- This information was reportedly sold and used to justify everything from dropping coverage to raising insurance premiums.
Texas recently sued Allstate and Arity for violating data privacy laws. The Lone Star state alleged they “conspired to secretly collect and sell ‘trillions of miles’ of consumers’ driving behavior data from mobile devices, in-car devices, and vehicles.”
Fast forward to today and the lawsuits are piling up. The latest comes from the Morgan & Morgan and Clifford Law Offices, which have filed a class action suit in the Northern District of Illinois. It alleges the companies invaded the privacy of more than 45 million Americans by collecting their data without prior consent. The suit spans 26 pages, but claims the duo “developed software that could be integrated into third-party apps to secretly collect consumers’ driving behavior.”
More: Allstate Accused Of Using Apps Like GasBuddy To Spy On Drivers And Raise Rates
Digging into the complaint, it claims Allstate and Arity paid app developers millions of dollars to integrate their software development kit (SDK) into apps and further incentivized them with bonuses for “increasing the size of their dataset.” This software collected an assortment of data from smartphones that had those apps installed. This is said to include “geolocation data, accelerometer data, magnetometer data, and gyroscopic data, which monitors details such as the phone’s altitude, longitude, latitude, bearing, GPS time, speed, and accuracy.”
That’s an enormous amount of information and the lawsuit said Allstate monetized it in multiple ways. For their own purposes, the company allegedly used the information when consumers requested a car insurance quote or had to renew their coverage. This ranged from denying or dropping coverage to justifying higher insurance premiums. The defendants also allegedly sold access to other insurers.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the complaint alleges consumers weren’t aware of the data collection and the selling of that information. They also reportedly never consented to it. While that’s a quick summary, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of Demetric Sims who used the Sirius XM app. It’s one of several – including Routely, Life360, GasBuddy, and Fuel Rewards – that reportedly integrated the Arity SDK.
In a joint statement, the law firms said “Allstate has allegedly built the ‘world’s largest driver database’ by collecting and selling data about tens of millions of people without their consent. Our class action lawsuit alleges that Allstate undertook this data collection effort to increase its profits at the expense of unaware consumers and their privacy. We are fighting on behalf of our clients to put a stop to this purportedly improper data collection and hold Allstate accountable for its alleged surveillance and invasion of privacy.”
