A class action suit against Toyota, Connected Analytic Service (CAS), and Progressive filed in Texas claims the “unauthorized collection and dissemination” of private information. 

The suit is the latest fallout from a 2024 New York Times investigation that found vehicle manufacturers sharing driving information with data brokers who, in return, sold data to insurance companies. 

While the New York Times article focused on automakers such as GM, Honda, Kia, and Hyundai and data broker LexisNexis, the suit says the same pattern of behavior is found with defendants Toyota, CAS (a data broker), and Progressive. 

“As this case shows, such driving data is collected, used, and offered for sale by defendants without class members’ consent, without users consenting or even being informed of his practice, regardless of whether any particular car functions are turned on, and in violation of statutory and common law principles,” says the suit filed in the Eastern District Court of Texas last week. 

The suit also notes a 2023 Mozilla Foundation research project that found “modern cars are a privacy nightmare.” The Mozilla Foundation also found a shifted focus from OEM’s selling cars to selling data, the suit says. 

Toyota, Progressive, and CAS all claim in their policies that they do not share driving data without consent, the suit says. 

According to the suit, Progressive has a data sharing program called Snapshot that measures a variety of factors related to driving, including the time of day you drive, sudden changes in speed, hard brakes and rapid accelerations, and the amount a consumer drives. This could also be how a mobile phone is being used while driving. 

Toyota promotes the program, noting that Toyota owners have to consent to share their driving data, the suit says. 

On or about March 20, 2021, Philip Siefke, the plaintiff, purchased a 2021 Toyota RAV4 XLE equipped with a telemetry tracking device, the suit says. 

In January 2025, Siefke attempted to sign up for an insurance policy with Progressive, the suit says. 

“As Plaintiff proceeded with the online process to sign up for an insurance policy, he opted out of Progressive’s Snapshot data sharing program,” the suit says. “After opting out of the Snapshot program in the online sign-up process, however, a background pop-up window appeared, notifying Plaintiff that Progressive was already in possession of his driving data up to January 20, 2025.”

 Siefke called and questioned a customer service representative (CSR) about the data, the suit alleges. 

“The Progressive CSR informed plaintiff that Progressive obtained plaintiff’s driving data from tracking technology installed in plaintiff’s Toyota vehicle,” the suit says. “Upon discovering that defendant Toyota had been tracking plaintiff’s driving data via tracking technology installed in his Toyota vehicle, plaintiff called Toyota on or about January 21, 2025 and spoke with a Toyota CSR to inquire why Toyota was sharing plaintiff’s driving data with third parties without his permission.”

According to the suit, Siefke was told by Toyota that he unknowingly signed up for a trial of sharing his driving data captured by the tracking technology, and he had to opt out of sharing the data. 

“Toyota, however, never provided the plaintiff with any sort of notice that Toyota would share his Driving Data with third parties,” the suit says. 

Siefke was also advised by Toyota to check his Toyota mobile phone application to verify whether he was participating in data sharing, the suit says. It says he checked his phone, and it showed he opted out of data sharing. 

“Accordingly, in violation of state and federal law and of its own data sharing policies, Toyota had been sharing the plaintiff’s driving data with third parties without his consent,” the suit alleges. 

Siefke was later told by Progressive that it had attained the data from CAS. 

The Texas suit is not the first following the New York Times investigation. Soon after the article was published, a suit was filed in Florida against General Motors, OnStar, and LexisNexis Risk Solutions. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also filed suit against General Motors and its subsidiary, OnStar for “false, deceptive, and misleading” business practices related to the alleged collection and sale of more than 1.8 million Texans’ private driving data to insurance companies.

In July, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Edward J. Markey asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate automakers’ alleged disclosure of driving data from millions of American consumer vehicles to data brokers.

In January, GM reached a settlement agreement with the FTC, which bans the company from disclosing consumers’ sensitive geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies for five years. 

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