Big brother watching...State Farm

[Ragnar]

I feel that I will have to pass on that option

[PalmerGA]

Originally Posted by 2Carats

Somebody needs to tell that to the ARMY. We have a whole different language that would run you crazy. IJS!

4 years active duty Army (Hoo-wah!) + 27 years working for DoD (USMC - Ooh-Raj!) as a GS... I am acronym savv, but I retired just before going crazy.

Well... maybe right at the moment.

[Scalded Dog]

Nah... State Farm or Progressive won't give your info/ data to the guv'ment.

Neither will Facebook, Google, Verizon, Apple... that's just crazy talk.

[Buzman]

I signed up for this and the savings is minimal, but they also give you full Onstar service for a year for free. According to my insurance agent the 1st couple months of this is used for data gathering. If you drive over 80mph it will affect your discount.

[Ragnar]

If you drive over 80mph it will affect your discount.[/QUOTE]

Whoops...

[mariojmoe]

Problem solved lol. Yes I know "they" can still access my car's ecu but at least not possibly invade my privacy hehe

[itsnotacrisis]

lmao, while I was reading this thread, the banner ad at the bottom of the page was for Progressive's Snapshot program...

[Evergreen6]

Originally Posted by goinggone14

Big Brother? The publicly traded company, State Farm, is Big Brother to you?

They're requesting that you offer them the ability to review your driving for safety in exchange for a discount on being a customer with lower liability for INSURANCE purposes. It's in the name: "Drive Safe and Save Program"

They don't care how you drive, they care about how much it costs to insure your driving ability based on probability of accident. It's comparable to offering coupons to save money on groceries but only if you manage to seek them out and bring them to the store.

This is not a "Big Brother" tactic, and you're being both foolish and paranoid if you choose to be cynical about something that's optional to save you money. Just let it be.

Having publicly traded status means absolutely nothing.

Forget "Big Brother" for a moment. How do you define "for Insurance Purposes"?

Regardless of how you do, the goal of an insurance company is to make money by collecting premiums which are bet against chance. Most auto insurance companies exist as arms of larger financial entities that invest premiums to make additional money, also based in chance.

If you think insurance companies exist to cover your ass, that's only their duty to YOU. It's secondary to their fiduciary duties, which is to make money, and turn profits.

What do you think they're eventually going to do with this data? Why would they even be interested in it? So they can better control their costs (i.e. claim payouts) and charge higher premiums where they can pinpoint more risk.

The agreement right now is receive a 5% discount, but if you read the terms of the agreement, they are subject to change and State Farm holds the upper hand. The data they are collecting is likely worth substantially more to them in terms of designing future "pay per risk/incident" products, or more ways to spend less and charge you more.

I don't buy into "Big Brother" tinfoil hat type stuff, but I'm not going to help out a financial corporation by giving them data they don't need, with the likelihood that they could use it against in the form of policy premiums later on.

[kinpin]

NO NO NO ,,,,

[songsj]

State Farm is not a publicly traded company. Not that it matters.

[45thCamaro]

Listen I have this same thing with allstate. They check what time of day your driving, given the time your risk changes. They also measure your braking pressure and to see if you driving over 80mph. You can always unplug the device...

[MBS]

Insurance companies can kiss my A$$ all this spying is out of control , Phone spying , Internet spying , Government spying , Electronic tickets from Cameras on streets ,now car insurance spying , Stay the hell out of my business.

[Stevew]

I bet they would raise my rates, or drop me.

[Evergreen6]

Originally Posted by songsj

State Farm is not a publicly traded company. Not that it matters.

Good catch. It does matter. But not necessarily to this discussion about monitoring driving. lol