[nimbius]

speaking as someone with a working knowledge of the technology used to track drivers for insurance purposes (OBD2 and CANbus) Ive always been remarkably suspicious of this sort of black-box "we will save you money" proposition.

tapping into the CAN (car area network) system on a vehicle lets you see things like timing retardation and advancement, barometric pressure, o2 levels, and throttle body positions. it tells you what these systems are doing in realtime but it fails to tell you why these systems did these things. at best youll have to make a guess, and insurance companies seem to have an incentive to lean into the "because you drive poorly" excuse in order to minimize risk to investors.

theres no target and no set of parameters that define what an altruistically good driver is in the eyes of these companies, only the companies insistence it can "save you money" without explaining what you must do other than "be a good driver" and install their widget, which runs mystery code that interacts with one of the most critical parts of your vehicle that may itself not even be DOT approved..

[bkberry352]

As someone working in the industry I can tell you that these insurance devices use precisely none of the sensors you mentioned. They use speed, odometer, and plug/unplug from the ECU, but that's basically it. They often collect time, GPS, and accelerometer, but that's from chips in the device not the car.

Also the OBD protocol is standardized and the device basically operates in a read-only fashion (cannot write data to the ECU). The worst problem that actually occurs with these is increased rates of battery drain while the car is off (though most devices have shutoffs in place to prevent the battery from getting too low).

[nimbius]

I touch an OBD2 port every single day.

I should have been more specific. They may not use this information for their product, but they are privy to it. theres also no transparency to say they ever delete that data.

OBD may be read only but CANbus pins exist in the OBD2 connector, and many CANbus implementations can be accessed through the OBD2. steering, brakes, and throttle can all be remotely controlled through the CANbus in most vehicles.

there has been at least one PoC that can detonate your airbags from the OBD. https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-1493...

[mbg721]

Insurers don't really care why some variable is correlated with increased claims as long as it is. They just want the maximum data at their disposal so they don't get outpriced by their competitors.