Insurers To Use Mobile Phones To Track

A new usage-based insurance (UBI) software platform will enable insurers to track drivers’ behavior through smartphone sensors and geolocation services.

Agero, one of the nation’s largest suppliers of roadside safety software and services to automakers and insurance companies, said its new UBI telematics suite will transmit to insurers the information needed to offer discounts to good drivers, penalize others, and send alerts to emergency assistance service providers.

The UBI suite consists of the PolicyPal app, which tracks driving habits in real time, and Auto Crash Notification (ACN), which automatically notifies emergency services within moments of an accident.

Currently, State Farm’s In-Drive and Progressive’s Snapshot program, offer customers the opportunity to voluntarily participate in programs in which their insurer collects vehicle data and uses the information to determine driving habits, which in turn can be used to offer lower-rate incentives to safer operators.

Unlike Agero’s new platform, however, In-Drive and Snapshot, use a small data collection device that plugs into a vehicle’s standard OBDII onboard diagnostics port under the dashboard and transmits data from a car’s central computer to insurance companies.

Agero’s new mobile suite will greatly expand upon the universe of consumers who can vie for “discount rates” based on their driving profiles. The mobile device also travels with them in or out of the vehicle.

Over the past decade, the insurance industry has been embroiled in a heated price war, with companies vying to be king of the heap for discount pricing.

“It’s becoming a cutthroat market. They’re competing on price,” said Jeff Blecher, senior vice president of strategy at Medford, Mass.-based Agero. “To break that mold, they need a new business model. UBI does that. Now, they can compete based on the risk profile of drivers.”

UBI offers the insurance industry new opportunities for tailored discount programs. Notably, they can switch from relying OBDII dongles plugged into the customer’s car and instead use mobile apps that travel with the driver, whether he’s traveling in his own car or another vehicle.

“We want to align our strategy… with the smartphone as primary data collection point,” Blecher said.

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Lawsuit Says Microsoft Illegally Tracks Customers

Microsoft allegedly tracks the location of its mobile user even after customers request that tracking software be turned off, according to a new lawsuit.

The proposed class action, filed in a Seattle federal court on Wednesday, states Microsoft intentionally designed camera software on the Windows Phone 7 operating system to ignore customer requests that they not be tracked.

A Microsoft representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit comes after concerns surfaced earlier this year that Apple’s iPhones collected location data and stored it for up to a year, even when location software was supposedly turned off. Apple issued a patch to fix the problem.

However, the revelation prompted renewed scrutiny of the nexus between location and privacy. At a hearing in May, U.S. lawmakers accused the tech industry of exploiting location data for marketing purposes — a potentially multibillion-dollar industry — without getting proper consent from millions of Americans.

The lawsuit against Microsoft cites a letter the company sent to Congress, in which Microsoft said it only collects geolocation data with the express consent of the user.