The lawsuit accuses Arity, an Allstate subsidiary, of collecting data about people’s driving behavior through mobile phone apps, leading to increase

Texas Sues Allstate Over Its Collection of Driver Data

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2025-01-14 14:30:07

The lawsuit accuses Arity, an Allstate subsidiary, of collecting data about people’s driving behavior through mobile phone apps, leading to increases in drivers’ insurance rates.

The State of Texas sued Allstate on Monday, accusing the insurer of illegally tracking drivers by way of their phones through a subsidiary called Arity that claimed to have the “world’s largest driving behavior database.”

“Allstate and Arity paid mobile apps millions of dollars to install Allstate’s tracking software,” Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement. “The personal data of millions of Americans was sold to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent in violation of the law. Texans deserve better and we will hold all these companies accountable.”

The New York Times reported last year that information about people’s driving behavior was being collected via smartphone apps, such as Life360 and GasBuddy, and sold to Arity, an analytics company founded by Allstate. Arity was able to analyze the data collected from people’s smartphones to determine how often they sped, braked suddenly or were distracted by their phones while driving. It used that analysis to give them driving risk scores.