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General Motors has agreed to pay $220 million to settle allegations that it collected and sold customers' driving information without their knowledge or consent. But the drivers whose information was allegedly sold — some of whom saw their insurance premiums increase — won't receive a dime.The October 29 settlement resolves allegations brought by attorneys general from 36 states and jurisdictions. The money goes to those states, not directly to affected drivers. GM must also comply with new privacy requirements, including obtaining express consent before collecting or sharing driving data.Beginning in December 2022, GM also provided Wejo with radio-listening data, including ignition timestamps, AM/FM frequencies, station call signs, time zones, and radio genres.That leaves an important question: How much money did GM make selling information its customers generated simply by driving their cars?The information came largely through GM's OnStar Smart Driver program, which operated from 2016 until 2024. It included trip times, speed, hard braking, acceleration, and other driving behavior. Data brokers sold this information to insurance companies, which could use it to help determine premiums.Chevy Bolt owner Kenn Dahl told the New York Times he learned a data broker had a detailed record of his trips after his insurance costs jumped 21%.The investigation also found that many customers were enrolled without their knowledge. In some cases, dealership employees allegedly accepted terms and conditions on their behalf. Worse, GM's OnStar app incorrectly told more than 370,000 drivers they weren't enrolled in Smart Driver even while their information was being collected and sold.Getting paid twiceJust how lucrative was GM's data business? A separate lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in August 2024 offers a detailed look at the financial arrangements behind it. Texas did not participate in the $220 million settlement.Under a 2015 agreement with Verisk Analytics, a company that supplies data and risk assessments to insurers, GM received an initial multimillion-dollar payment for its customers' driving information. Verisk then put that information into a database that insurance companies could pay to access.Every time insurers purchased licenses to the database, Verisk paid GM royalties based on the revenue generated. GM thus had a continuing financial interest in information collected from cars it had already sold.GM also required Verisk to approach other automakers, telecommunications companies, and third parties about contributing their information to the exchange. Verisk subsequently entered similar agreements with Honda in 2017 and Hyundai in 2018, according to the Texas lawsuit.The information wasn't anonymous. According to the filing, GM supplied Verisk with names, home addresses, vehicle identification numbers, and other identifying information that could be connected to individual driving records.Insurers could then look up a driver's score when deciding whether to issue coverage, renew a policy, or set premiums.A $70 million yearGM's arrangement with Verisk wasn't its only source of revenue from driving information.A 2018 deal with Wejo, a British connected-car company, put a dollar figure on a single year's worth of driving records. GM paid $25 million for a 35% ownership stake in Wejo and agreed to supply 2018 data from 2.6 million vehicles. The Texas filing values those records at $70 million.Wejo could license the information to businesses beyond the insurance industry, subject to GM's approval.The agreement described in the Texas lawsuit included a minimum monthly licensing revenue target of $3 million, with Wejo agreeing to pay GM 70% of that revenue. Wejo also agreed to reimburse GM if it failed to meet the target.The relationship continued until Wejo declared bankruptcy in May 2023.And GM wasn't limiting the information it supplied to driving behavior. Beginning in December 2022, GM also provided Wejo with radio-listening data, including ignition timestamps, AM/FM frequencies, station call signs, time zones, and radio genres.Think about that. Your driving habits were one thing. But even the radio stations you listened to could become part of a commercial data business.Beyond GMOther automakers are facing scrutiny over similar practices.In April 2026, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen opened an investigation into Ford and Stellantis over reports that the companies collected and sold or licensed vehicle data to third parties, including data brokers and insurers.The investigation is separate from the GM settlement, and the allegations against Ford and Stellantis have not been established as violations of the law. But the concern extends well beyond a single automaker or a discontinued OnStar program.Modern vehicles can collect enormous amounts of information about their owners. That information can be packaged, analyzed, licensed, and sold to businesses the driver may never have heard of.And if an insurance company uses that information to raise your rates, you could end up paying more because of data you never knowingly agreed to share.RELATED: Washington blocked Polestar. So why are Chinese-built robotaxis on American streets? Bloomberg/Getty ImagesWhere's the driver's cut?The GM settlement imposes new safeguards. The company must obtain affirmative consent before collecting or sharing driving and location information, limit its data collection, and strengthen oversight of dealership enrollment practices.But GM did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel confirmed that the agreement provides no direct consumer restitution. A separate private class-action lawsuit seeking monetary relief remains pending.So the states receive millions, GM agrees to new rules, and drivers whose information may have affected their insurance premiums get nothing.That's a pretty convenient outcome for everyone except the consumer.Automakers need to explain what information they're collecting, who is buying it, and how much money changes hands. Insurance companies should disclose when driving information influences rates, and consumers deserve the ability to challenge inaccurate records before those records affect their wallets.If a company can make money from your driving habits, should you receive a share? And if your information was used to increase your insurance premium without your knowledge or consent, shouldn't you be entitled to a refund?Show me the money!

Republicans just got destroyed in the midterms, but President Trump doesn't seem particularly interested in admitting anything went wrong. Instead, he’s celebrating what he calls the “greatest two years in the history of the presidency.”BlazeTV hosts Dave Landau and Stu Burguiere are far from convinced.“The results were not good, and conservatives, Republicans, anyone who was not a socialist pretty much got smoked. With the exception of Florida, basically, everything went the wrong way,” Stu says.“Trump says in an interview he will accept the election results,” he continues, noting that “every single Democrat I’ve talked to for the last two years has told me he would not accept the results if he lost.”“And then he lost and he’s accepting the results,” he adds, before playing a clip of the president in a post-results interview on Fox News. “Congratulations to the Democrats. They did a good job. They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years, and they finally got it. But I don’t view it as a hit on me. I think we’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency,” Trump said.However, Dave isn’t loving Trump’s response, comparing it to “saying when my dad was the sickest before he died, ‘I had the best two years with him.’”“One of the things I’ve wanted from the day that Donald Trump came down the escalator is for him to just be like, ‘Look, it’s not going well, and I screwed X, Y, and Z up, and here’s how we’re going to fix it.’ And he just never gets to that point,” Stu agrees.“I understand why he does it. He’s a big believer in the power of positive thinking. He believes he can will things into existence,” he adds.While Trump’s response wasn’t what Stu and Dave hoped for, Trump has had a “rough decade.”“There is something to be said of the Democrats for the constant impeachment going at him, the way that the media has conducted themselves when talking to him. It’s been a very rough decade,” Dave says.But the rough decade isn’t being made better by Trump’s actions, as Dave says he “did not arrest the people that should have been arrested,” journalist Nick Shirley has been “going around and figuring out fraud online before you have the people that should be discovering it,” and ICE is being “very performative."“But I mean, the way that everything was handled to actually fix the country, I think, has been pretty rough if I’m being honest,” he adds.Want more from Stu and Dave?To enjoy more of Stu and Dave's lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan remains confident that he has fended off Democrat challenger Mary Peltola in Alaska's U.S. Senate race despite the alleged "Decoy Dan" scheme.As of Thursday morning, Sullivan is trailing the volatile Democrat candidate by 637 votes with 75% of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. Dan J. Sullivan, the spoiler candidate whom Peltola's campaign allegedly recruited, has secured 1.7% of the vote.'We are witnessing the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of the state of Alaska.'Since neither Sen. Sullivan nor Peltola has met the 50% threshold — Sullivan has 47.9% and Peltola has 48.2% — it appears that the ranked-choice voting process will continue.Sullivan's campaign expressed optimism about the Republican's chances in RCV, stating in a press email that he is poised to win "despite the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of Alaska. He is also in the position despite a bloodbath for Republicans everywhere else in the country."Although Sen. Sullivan is presently lagging behind, analysis by the Alaska Beacon shows that the senator would likely gain 2,728 votes under RCV when Republican challenger Gerald Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan are eliminated. Peltola would pick up only a projected 1,868 from vote redistribution. Alaska is expected to conduct RCV tabulations on November 18, when correctly postmarked absentee ballots are due. "We knew it was going to be close, right?" Sullivan told supporters on election night. "We knew we probably wouldn't get final results for days, given, you know, our system.""I'm confident when all the votes are counted, I will have the honor of representing you in the United States Senate again for six more years," added Sullivan.RELATED: NY Times exposes Alaska Democrat's alleged hunt for another Dan Sullivan to run against Republican - A decisive victory on Sullivan's part would likely spare the state a major headache given Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy's suggestion last week that he might not certify the election should Peltola eke out a win after credible allegations about cheating.A month after it published damning complaints against Peltola from former staffers, the New York Times published detailed claims about her campaign's alleged efforts to recruit individuals with her Republican opponent's namesake, including Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg, who found his way onto the ballot.Following the Times' Oct. 28 report that relied on testimony from Peltola's former campaign manager, the governor told NewsNation on Thursday that if the state concludes that there "were things that should not have happened ... that are illegal, we will act on that — and that may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in this U.S. Senate."Sen. Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday, "We are witnessing the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of the state of Alaska, one of the — maybe one of the biggest in the U.S. Senate's history."Peltola ran on the promise to fix "the rigged system in DC that's shutting down Alaska." Her track record suggests, however, that she is ill equipped to change anything.The Alaska Democrat — who had the second-highest staff turnover rate in the U.S. House during her final year in office — introduced 23 bills and resolutions during her previous stint in Congress, none of which became law. During her time as a congresswoman, she was one of the top 10 absentee lawmakers, missing 235 of 1,370 roll-call votes.The Alaska Division of Elections is not expected to publish an official election result until Nov. 25.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Reddit was boosted heavily in Google Search results for years, driving clicks and promoting sustainability. So it’s no surprise that Reddit took a massive hit when AI Overview overshadowed Search, and now Reddit is locking its platform to prevent AI — and people — from accessing it without an account.Google Search used to be a reciprocal tool that benefited both Google and website publishers. When users searched for a term, Google brought up a list of websites that included that keyword. If the results were relevant, the user clicked, giving the website vital traffic and earning both it and Google some ad revenue. These were much simpler times. Better times, even. But I digress.You should expect more companies to restrict their platforms as AI bots and agents run amok, otherwise unchecked, across the World Wide Web.Today Google largely cuts out the middleman to serve itself. Search is now a secondary product, dwarfed by AI Overview, where users type a query into the search bar, and Google AI Overview provides a response scraped from all the websites that are now further down the page — out of sight, out of mind. Users don’t have to click to get an answer anymore, because AI Overview already presented the information in full, robbing both website publishers and Google of that same ad revenue that kept them afloat.All ad-based websites were hit hard by this monumental change. Even Google recently admitted that AI Overview probably isn’t good for its bottom line, as search revenue growth slowed, per the latest earnings call at the end of October. Among the hardest hit websites, though, was Reddit.In a not-too-distant past, Google and Reddit had a close relationship. The former often referenced the latter in snippet results and ranked Reddit high on its result listings. This is how AI Overview ended up generating some extremely odd — and sometimes dangerous — responses in its early days, leaning on Reddit comments that advised users to replace cheese on pizza with non-toxic glue or eat one rock per day for good health. Even after switching to an AI-first search solution, Google still pulled data from Reddit and displayed it prominently, this time, though, without the backlinks that benefited Reddit’s platform. Mere months after AI Overview overtook Search, this level of data scraping without anything in return isn’t sustainable for Reddit’s brand. To block AI bots from continuing to repackage Subreddits as their own, Reddit is officially locking anonymous accounts — both human and AI — out of its platform for good.Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, announced the move on his profile, writing:I want to talk about a big change we're making on Reddit: We're going to evolve Reddit to being a primarily logged-in experience.We’re making the change because it’s better for user experience, better for our ads business, is more in line with safety regulations, and more protective of Reddit data. And we can do this while continuing to ensure user privacy.RELATED: Google's AI overhaul of Search will overfish the internet to extinction bgblue/Getty ImagesHe went on to highlight several main reasons for the decision, from user personalization, to data protection, to regulatory factors, and more. One of the biggest points that stood out, though, was that “the vast majority of unauthorized access to Reddit (basically the scraping and stealing of Reddit’s data) happens through our logged-out experiences.”Basically, AI bots are anonymously mining Reddit for data — namely users’ comments, thoughts, and interactions — and leaving the company with nothing to show for it.The change isn’t set in stone yet, so there’s still time to tweak how it will work. First, it will enter a testing phase in several unnamed regions outside of the United States through the end of 2026 and into 2027. If that goes well, users should expect a wider rollout that will officially restrict Subreddits to those who have a username and password.This isn’t the first controversial move Reddit has made recently to protect its business. Earlier this year, the company forced some users to download the Reddit app on their mobile devices in lieu of visiting Subreddits on the mobile web.You should expect more companies to restrict their platforms as AI bots and agents run amok, otherwise unchecked, across the World Wide Web.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!