This Man Sued Toyota After He Found Out His Car Was Tracking Him
Do you know what you're agreeing to when you tick the terms & conditions agreement box? A man found that by agreeing to his driving data being used for "quality confirmation, data analysis, research, and product development," he had apparently given Toyota permission to sell that information to anyone who wanted it. Philip Siefke of Eagle Lake, Florida, says that he didn't give his consent for his data to be sold to insurance companies and is now suing Toyota, along with Progressive Insurance and a data analytics company called CAS.
Modern cars collect all kinds of data about you when you're driving. This includes not only how you drive your car but also information from connected services, your car's app(s), and third-party tools like Google Maps. Siefke became aware of the issue while looking for insurance coverage. When he opted out of data-sharing on Progressive's website, he was notified that the company already had all his driving data. This even included an incident of "hard braking" the previous day. Siefke submitted a class action against the companies in April 2025. However, in December, a judge ruled that, as Siefke had accepted Toyota's terms, the case had to go through a private arbitration process rather than through the courts.
What laws does Siefke say Toyota has broken?
According to the original class action, Siefke says that he checked his Toyota application, and it showed he had opted out of the data sharing scheme. Toyota says otherwise. The company claims that Siefke had agreed to the terms and conditions, which allowed it to share driving data with third-party companies.
He is suing for violations of the federal Wiretap Act, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and invasion of privacy. He states that people should "have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their driving abilities, habits, patterns, and behavior engaged in while they are in their own vehicles." He also claims that Toyota has unjustly enriched itself by selling the data of its cars' drivers "directly at the expense of their privacy and financial interests."
The argument here is that while there may be a reasonable expectation that data might be used for things like improving car safety, simply passing on private data for profit is contrary to Toyota's customers' best interests. This isn't Toyota's only legal headache at the moment. The company is also facing a class-action over transmissions allegedly 'plagued' by defects.
Toyota isn't the only car manufacturer selling people's data
Other major car manufacturers have also been accused of misusing car tracking data. In January 2026, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that General Motors had been banned from selling customer driving records for the next five years. The FTC found that GM's data-collection policies were not made clear to people who signed up for the company's Smart Driver program.
Like Toyota, GM was selling driving behavior data to third parties, including insurance companies. Senators in Oregon and Massachusetts have called on the FTC to investigate data-selling by Honda and Hyundai. Their investigation revealed that access to a driver's full driving data can be sold for as little as 26 cents. The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, has launched an investigation into car manufacturers' collection and sale of driver data, saying, "These reports of the invasive and unmitigated collection and sale of data without consumer consent are disturbing, and they merit a thorough investigation and appropriate enforcement."
Studies have shown that car companies collect more personal data than is necessary, and many of them share that information with insurers. Mozilla looked into this in 2023, assessing 25 car companies and finding that not one of them met the study's privacy standards for data use and security. Mozilla's research reveals a situation where car companies can (and often do) collect whatever personal information they want to and then pass it on. One of the team's researchers concluded that automakers have "shifted their focus from selling cars to selling data." Even if Philip Siefke doesn't get his day in court, by suing Toyota he has shone a much-needed light on the privacy nightmare of modern connected driving.