These apps track your driving habits and sell that information to insurance companies

[maxxcool7421]

Oh, don't worry...you can bet the government IS stepping in. Once they figure out they can TAX people based on the miles they drive, bring in MORE money than the fuel tax, they will.

good .. to many scumbag tax dodgers as it is avoiding gas taxes

 

[WaphleStomp]

the pings from your cell phone track your avg speed direction and elevation. your are tracked. period. if you own a car after 2012 with any sort of onstar or equivalent you are tracked by it pinging cell towers or low orbit satellites unless you reach under and CUT the data line from the ECU to the antenna MODULE (removing the antenna does nothing but lower range)

Ahhh ... you seemed to have glazed over the part where I typed I keep my phone turned off in the car. And, you also didn't read the part where I said I own a mid-80s pickup truck, which equals no Onstar and no pinging.

 

[hwertz]

I just set my apps to "allow location this time only, only while using app", IF the app has a reason for location. Otherwise "deny this time"; if the app breaks, I'll probably uninstall it (if it's one that shouldn't need my location but breaks without it, it probably means they were collecting that info to sell it!) If it doesn't break, then "deny every time" so I don't have to keep denying it each time.

I have an MPG meter on my car; and GasBuddy can only measure acceleration, so it's just going to say the slower you accelerate, the more you're saving gas (even though, on some vehicles that's not actually the case -- I saw a Toyota manual where they actually suggested accelerating "briskly", it saved more fuel to get up to speed and go into a fuel-efficient cruising mode than to accelerate like an old lady and spend all that distance slowly accelerating instead.) Not necessary, thanks!

 

[hwertz]

I drove a Class A vehicle, (pulled a 53' semi-trailer, with a Peterbilt conventional model 579) from Feb. 1993 until June 2023 last year. I retired a bit early, because of the way you dangerous fools drive! I'm speaking of all drivers, regardless of license class! 99% of the driving public, are very dangerous a-holes! I was the guy in my big truck of my personal vehicle, driving a 1/8th or a 1/4 mile behind you fools, clustered up, cutting each other off, brake checking each other, throwing things at each other shooting at each other, tailgating, etc... I'm surprised there aren't more crashes as a result of the way you fools drive every day!

For real. In Iowa it's not TOO bad. Mostly though because traffic levels are low enough, when there's a basketball or football game in town and traffic is tight, people here drive like total morons.

I drove through Memphis and the drivers there are completely insane. I saw people doing like 100+MPH, in lanes with huge potholes around overpass curves, so they were jumping 1/2 a lane over every time they hit the massive potholes. I personally don't mind driving at high speeds one bit; but I mean really, if the road is so bumpy your suspension can't keep the car in the lane, you should probably slow it down! They were at least in the leftmost lanes, the traffic in right lanes was "only" doing like 80 or so. They were actually calling in the state national guard to start writing traffic tickets. There was a pileup as I drove through, and it didn't even make the local news -- they have so many a week they don't even mention them unless it has at least 5-10 cars involved!

Rochester, MN is probably the worst drivers I've seen anywhere, period -- people'll speed up by 20MPH to CUT OFF people trying to merge onto the highways there! You CANNOT signal a lane changes there, whoever is in that lane WILL either brake or accelerate to block out lane changes (not like "oh, there's 1.1 car lengths here, let's squeeze in -- they'll do that even if there's 5 or 10 car lengths open!). And even if it's someone wanting to move right to exit; you'd think people'd at least make it easy to get OFF the highway so that car will be out of their way! Just given those two restrictions alone you can imagine how people drove there. Oh, AND they run bumper-to-bumper and tailgate even in snow (even when there are other lanes with light traffic -- since, after all, that light traffic WILL try to cut anyone off that tries to change into the lane.)

 

[Zcolor]

For real. In Iowa it's not TOO bad. Mostly though because traffic levels are low enough, when there's a basketball or football game in town and traffic is tight, people here drive like total morons.

I drove through Memphis and the drivers there are completely insane. I saw people doing like 100+MPH, in lanes with huge potholes around overpass curves, so they were jumping 1/2 a lane over every time they hit the massive potholes. I personally don't mind driving at high speeds one bit; but I mean really, if the road is so bumpy your suspension can't keep the car in the lane, you should probably slow it down! They were at least in the leftmost lanes, the traffic in right lanes was "only" doing like 80 or so. They were actually calling in the state national guard to start writing traffic tickets. There was a pileup as I drove through, and it didn't even make the local news -- they have so many a week they don't even mention them unless it has at least 5-10 cars involved!

Rochester, MN is probably the worst drivers I've seen anywhere, period -- people'll speed up by 20MPH to CUT OFF people trying to merge onto the highways there! You CANNOT signal a lane changes there, whoever is in that lane WILL either brake or accelerate to block out lane changes (not like "oh, there's 1.1 car lengths here, let's squeeze in -- they'll do that even if there's 5 or 10 car lengths open!). And even if it's someone wanting to move right to exit; you'd think people'd at least make it easy to get OFF the highway so that car will be out of their way! Just given those two restrictions alone you can imagine how people drove there. Oh, AND they run bumper-to-bumper and tailgate even in snow (even when there are other lanes with light traffic -- since, after all, that light traffic WILL try to cut anyone off that tries to change into the lane.)

Yep! I see, you know... You're probably a good driver. It's a F mess to be sure...