States need to have and use data privacy laws to bring privacy violations to light and hold companies accountable for them. So, we were glad to see th

Texas Is Enforcing Its State Data Privacy Law. So Should Other States.

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2025-01-25 23:00:02

States need to have and use data privacy laws to bring privacy violations to light and hold companies accountable for them. So, we were glad to see that the Texas Attorney General’s Office has filed its first lawsuit under Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA) to take the Allstate Corporation to task for sharing driver location and other driving data without telling customers.

In its complaint, the attorney general’s office alleges that Allstate and a number of its subsidiaries (some of which go by the name “Arity”) “conspired to secretly collect and sell ‘trillions of miles’ of consumers’ ‘driving behavior’ data from mobile devices, in-car devices, and vehicles.” (The defendant companies are also accused of violating Texas’ data broker law and its insurance law prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices.)

On the privacy front, the complaint says the defendant companies created a software development kit (SDK), which is basically a set of tools that developers can create to integrate functions into an app. In this case, the Texas Attorney General says that Allstate and Arity specifically designed this toolkit to scrape location data. They then allegedly paid third parties, such as the app Life360, to embed it in their apps. The complaint also alleges that Allstate and Arity chose to promote their SDK to third-party apps that already required the use of location date, specifically so that people wouldn’t be alerted to the additional collection.