Jon Keegan7/26/24

Carmakers are selling out their customers for as low as 26 cents

Following reports revealing car manufacturers’ sales of driver data to insurance companies and data brokers, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey sent a letter today (the third such letter from lawmakers) to FTC Chair Lina Khan urging the agency to investigate the practice.

In the newest letter, Wyden says his staff’s investigation revealed some hard numbers for how much the driver data — which includes events like braking and acceleration — was actually worth to companies such as General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai.

Verisk, a data broker described as “a credit agency for drivers,” purchased driving behavior data from connected vehicle manufacturers, scored them for risk, then sold them to insurance companies. Versik shuttered this particular program after the New York Times reporting.

Hyundai told Wyden’s office that between 2018 and 2024 they shared data from 1.7 million cars with Verisk and were paid 61 cents per car. Hyundai also confirmed they had enrolled customers in its “Driver Score” program without their permission.

Honda said that from 2020 to 2024 it sold data from 97,000 cars to Verisk for 26 cents per car, and also admitted it did so without driver permission. General Motors refused to disclose the numbers behind their data sales.

The connected vehicle data industry monetizes driver behavior data, but also collects driver location data, though the industry has struggled to deliver on its estimated potential.

AMOUNT HONDA WAS PAID PER CAR FOR DRIVER DATA

$0.26

Amount Hyundai was paid per car for driver data

$0.61

More Tech

Tesla shareholders approve Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package

The voting results were announced at Tesla’s 2025 annual shareholders meeting Thursday.

ITALY-POLITICS-PARTY-ATREJU-RIGHT-FDI

Microsoft falls as it lays out plan for “Humanist Superintelligence” without OpenAI

Microsoft AI’s CEO explained its vision for superintelligence that prioritizes human control.

Microsoft Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary With Copilot AI Event

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Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports

Meta has been making billions of dollars per year from scam ads and sales of banned goods, according internal Meta documents seen by Reuters.

The new report quantifies the scale of fraud taking place on Meta’s platforms, and how much the company profited from them.

Per the report, Meta internal projections from late last year said that 10% of the company’s total 2024 revenue would come from scammy ads and sales of banned goods — which works out to $16 billion.

Discussions within Meta acknowledged the steep fines likely to be levied against the company for not stopping the fraudulent behavior on its platforms, and the company prioritized enforcement in regions where the penalties would be steepest, the reporting found. The cost of lost revenue from clamping down on the scams was weighed against the cost of fines from regulators.

The documents reportedly show that Meta did aim to significantly reduce the fraudulent behavior, but cuts to its moderation team left the vast majority of user-reported violations to be ignored or rejected.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement:

“We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Per the report, Meta internal projections from late last year said that 10% of the company’s total 2024 revenue would come from scammy ads and sales of banned goods — which works out to $16 billion.

Discussions within Meta acknowledged the steep fines likely to be levied against the company for not stopping the fraudulent behavior on its platforms, and the company prioritized enforcement in regions where the penalties would be steepest, the reporting found. The cost of lost revenue from clamping down on the scams was weighed against the cost of fines from regulators.

The documents reportedly show that Meta did aim to significantly reduce the fraudulent behavior, but cuts to its moderation team left the vast majority of user-reported violations to be ignored or rejected.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement:

“We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”

OpenAI says its AI device will be “multimodal” but doesn’t give many more details

Here’s what we know about the Jony Ive and OpenAI device so far.

Jony Ive and Sam Altman

Google wants to invest even more money into Anthropic, with the search giant in talks for a new funding round that could value the AI startup at $350 billion, Business Insider reports. That’s about double its valuation from two months ago, but still shy of competitor OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider said the new deal “could also take the form of a strategic investment where Google provides additional cloud computing services to Anthropic, a convertible note, or a priced funding round early next year.”

In October, Google, which has a 14% stake in Anthropic, announced that it had inked a deal worth “tens of billions” for Anthropic to access Google’s AI compute to train and serve its Claude model.

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