I will preface this by saying that first of all, I am as guilty as most other people, and didn't look over the terms of service when I signed up with Life 360. Also, when I set things up with it for Hubitat a couple years ago, I don't recall seeing this, but I haven't gone to the app pretty much since then, so maybe I don't recall.
So, for those like me that missed this, if you go to the Life 360 app, at the bottom is a tab for driving record. It is recording when you speed, when you hard brake, and if you go over 80. Turns out they are selling that info to Lexis Nexis. Guess who one of the places your car insurance company goes to for you driving record and information?
There is an option to turn that recording off, which I've done. It still seems to work hit or miss with Hubitat as a location sensor, so I'm not sure I want to totally uninstall the app, but, that may be on the table.
Exactly. But it still shows. What I'd like to know is, why do they just blank check record hard stops as a bad driving habit? What if some kid ran out in the road and I couldn't get over? What if some jack wad cuts me off on the interstate, and again, I can't change lanes? But that's my fault?
And what about the two times in the last year I was in Germany on the Autobahn? Do they take the location into account, or still consider driving over 80 as dangerous?
The worst that could happen is they raise your rates. Why should they care about errors?
Actually, lots of other bad things could happen. You could be branded as "risky" and denied health insurance or pay higher rates. Your credit score could be affected. You might be quoted higher interest rates for a mortgage or credit cards. You could be denied boarding on air travel or thrown in the dungeon.
it's the only cross platform way of seeing where the family is in real time.
Extremely easy to set up
Owntracks has come a long way but still has miles to go to catch up to Life360. Until I can just load an app on each device, send an invite to join as Friends and see all friends on one map. I just can't switch.
I just set up Owntracks for my wife and myself, because I want presense information in HE and we have two houses and HE can't handle that. A big deficiency IMO, but it is what it is.
I can see where my wife is on the map and vice versa, and Owntracks was easy to set up although I just did it for two people.
I switched to Allstate's Milewise plan a few years ago. They give you a device to plug into your car's OBD port, and Allstate also keeps track of distance travelled over 80mph, hard braking and also driving after midnight. At first I was a bit uncomfortable with this, but it hasn't been a problem.
Actually, I think it has improved my driving a bit as I really try not to exceed 80 unless I really have to. There's just no reason to drive like an a-hole, and 80 is already 10 mph over the upper speed limit of US highways.
I wouldn't be terribly concerned. Insurance companies don't want to cover reckess drivers, but they don't want to not cover safe drivers either. My guess is that they calculate how many hard stops and miles driven over 80 in relation to how many total miles you've driven. As was stated, there are legitimate reasons for hard stops and the insurance companies know this. They don't want to not insure you because you hard braked to avoid an accident. OTOH, if you're hard braking constantly then that is probably a good indication that you're a tailgater and IMO, you should be charged higher rates because you're a menace on the road .
Anyhow, in my experience (solely with Allstate), my rates have not gone up in the two years I've been providing this data to them. And my overall insuranc bill is less than half it was prior, because we only get charged for actual miles driven (plus a base daily charge).
Apple is VERY adamant about not wanting your data and doing everything possible to keep your private data private and on device. The data it does keep in the cloud is encrypted and the keys to decrypt it are… on device. but dont take my word for it…
I had already had the "do not share" enabled but this finally gave me the push I needed to finally delete my account and remove the app.
I have Owntracks setup for my bride and I and only kept 360 because of the accident detection. It does work as I was notified last year when my wife was in a car that was rear ended.
I use Owntracks from a dashboard to check our locations and this will just expedite her iPhone replacement to the newer models with accident detection built in.
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