Phone App That Watches Your Driving Habits Leads To Privacy Concerns

Toshito writes Desjardins Insurance has launched a smartphone app that tracks driver behaviour in return for the promise of substantial savings on car insurance. Two years ago, Desjardins began offering a telematic device that plugs into a vehicle's diagnostic port, to track acceleration, hard braking and the time of day you were driving, for instance. Now, there's no plug-in device required. With Desjardins's new Ajusto app, all you need is your smartphone. But this comes with great concerns over privacy, and problems have been reported where the device was logging data when the user was riding a bus instead of driving his own car.

Comments

How does this work?

[BitterOak]

What if you just have your phone turned off when you drive, or don't take it with you in the first place? Maybe the insurance savings are even substantial enough that you can get a second phone and only take the phone with this app on short trips and drive on those trips very carefully. When you want to do your street racing, you bring the other phone.

Punished for other people's driving.

[SeaFox]

But this comes with great concerns over privacy, and problems have been reported where the device was logging data when the user was riding a bus instead of driving his own car.

So is there some additional device in the car the phone app pairs with? Otherwise, how does the app know when you're driving your own car or simply a passenger in someone else's. This whole thing doesn't sound like it was thought out very well.