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GM’s Privacy Policy Is Fairly Easy To Understand, According To Study

Whether it’s installing some new software, signing up for a new streaming service, or simply visiting a website, the modern digital world is filled to bursting with privacy policies and opportunities for companies to collect your data. That includes the automotive sector, with major automakers across the industry ramping up their data collecting practices. GM is no different, but according to a report, GM’s privacy policy is fairly easy to understand.

The GM privacy policy is fairly easy to understand, according to a new report.

Per a new report from All About Cookies, the General Motors privacy policy requires roughly an 11-grade reading level to understand. What’s more, the policy is about 5,000 words long, which is relatively short compared to most other major automakers.

All About Cookies analyzed privacy policies from 15 major automakers, ranking each on its reading level (ranked by grade level, ranging between 8th grade and Post-grad) and policy word count. The automaker with the most difficult-to-understand privacy policy was Jeep, which, according the report, requires a collegiate postgraduate degree to fully understand. The least-difficult-to-understand policy was Mazda’s, which required an 8th-grade reading level for comprehension. Mazda also had the shortest policy at roughly 2,200 words. Kia had the longest policy at 14,000 words, but only required an 11th grade level reading level for comprehension.

All About Cookies reports that the average number of words in a car privacy policy is 7,505, while the average policy requires a 12th-grade reading level to understand.

The analysis was conducted by copy-pasting each automotive privacy policy into the Hemingway Editor App, which then evaluated the policies for readability and length. The evaluation was conducted in January of 2024 using the most-recent version of each automaker’s policy as of January 2nd, 2024.

General Motors recently announced that it was ending its business relationship with data analysis firms LexisNexis and Verisk after the automaker was handed a lawsuit alleging that GM shared private OnStar data for individual consumers without obtaining consent.

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Jonathan is an automotive journalist based out of Southern California. He loves anything and everything on four wheels.

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Comments

  1. This is hilarious. Its also the downfall of our society

    Reply
    1. Average American reading level 7th to 8th grade, man that’s scary.
      What does the future hold ?

      Reply
      1. Have you seen the movie “Idiocracy”? Pretty much that.

        Reply
  2. The Mazda PP is easy to understand, but also pretty scary:

    “WE AUTOMATICALLY COLLECT CERTAIN DEFAULT DATA FROM THE CONNECTED VEHICLE ON AN ONGOING BASIS.
    ‘Default Data’ includes the following:
    Driving behavior data, which includes the acceleration and speed at which your Connected Vehicle is driven and use of the steering and braking functions.
    Location Data: Geo-location coordinates of your Connected Vehicle’s latitude and longitude are collected each time you turn off your Connected Vehicle (“Ignition-Off”).”

    Reply
    1. @SteveInSoCal
      GM’s OnStar Privacy Agreement says the same. My beef is there is noting mentioned anywhere about selling the data to aggregators which will sell that data + whatever else associated with you they already have to insurance companies to determine an individual’s insurance rate. The closest they get is “to third parties to provide services” of something similar to that. In my mind, that’s a bit ambiguous.

      Reply
  3. In the Smart Driver app, in the account management area, all the way at the bottom, the “Legal Terms” section provides links:
    • Privacy Statement for Application Services (PSAS) which incorporates the OnStar Privacy Statement – a link is provided, so that should be reviewed;
    • a separate selection to the OnStar Privacy Statement which has different information from the PSAS;
    • the associated User Terms should also be read.
    • In the “second” OnStar Privacy Services link in the “California Privacy Statement” section, there appears to be a link near the bottom which refers to the “GM Privacy Statement” which is blue and underlined as an embedded link would be, but this one does nothing. I used my computer to go to gm.com, scroll all the way to the bottom and select “Privacy Statement” (on the right).

    While I read through all the sections, the chapter titles which appear related to this discussion (“How We Use Your Information”, “How We Share Your Information”, “Third Party Services, Applications, and Websites”), do not mention anything about providing the user-identifiable to data consolidators who would sell the data to vehicle insurance companies.

    These various GM “Privacy Policy” documents may be “fairly easy to understand”, but which one did the author of this article use?

    Reply
  4. Two words CLASS ACTION

    Reply
    1. Might be hard to prove GM culpable due to the fact that most people don’t read it and just click “OK”. The onus is on us (LOL) to read before agreeing, we can’t agree and then complain that we did. I can’t imagine any court taking this due to the negligence of the people who don’t read it.

      Reply
  5. GM’s privacy policy is that you have no privacy.

    Reply
    1. It’s not just GM, it’s this site, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your State, your wi-fi connected appliances, your insurance company, anything electronic that you “touch” or read, your grocery store that offers a “members club” type discount card, your cell phone company, Siri, Alexa, Google……privacy is an illusion, really, in an electronic age. Up until a few weeks ago, we all just agreed to it and now that someone else has done our homework we’re mad. Read EVERYTHING before agreeing to use it.

      Reply
      1. Please keep in mind that the newer autos will be moving to newer vehicle operating systems. GM is using a new Google vehicle OS. While I’m trying to believe that they don’t want to repeat the horrendous malware challenges provided by Android, we all know they have a lock on advertising and data capture through their search engine, but I recently read a Bloomberg article about gathering user data without permission (including end users opting out, using Incognito, and Google getting/using the data for lots of different activities anyway).

        My crystal ball predicts all that vehicle data that GM recently told us they stopped collecting may end up at Google and the “oops, we did it” happens again.

        We ordered our Lyriq nearly two years ago and finally took delivery about 2 months ago. It has some minor things that the dealer is addressing. Overall, we really like it, but this OnStar Smart Driver data privacy and Apple CarPlay debacle is no longer able to pass my “grin test”.

        Currently, the only thing keeping us where we are, related to vehicles, is the Lyriq is a 2024 and CarPlay supposedly remains available even after GM phases it out for future vehicles.

        Reply

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