Allstate and its data subsidiary. Arity, are facing new legal challenges detailed in class action filings, which allege they violated federal and state privacy laws to collect driving data.

Several law firms have announced the class actions, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of named plaintiffs in Georgia and California—and “other similarly situated” potential class members—who believe that the defendants collected their driving data without their consent through software embedded in third-party mobile apps. The plaintiffs also believe that the defendants monetized the data by selling it to other insurers and using it to raise car insurance prices.

The class actions came within days of a Jan. 13, 2025 lawsuit filed by the state of Texas along similar lines, which centered on partnerships that Arity has with mobile phone app developers like Life360, GasBuddy and Fuel Rewards, and driving behavior data that Arity uses to power some of the services promised by the third-party apps (and by Routely, an Arity telematics app). The data includes phone geolocation data, accelerometer data, magnetometer data, and gyroscopic data, which monitors details such as the phone’s altitude, longitude, latitude, bearing, GPS time, speed, and accuracy, the Texas filing said, alleging that Allstate and other insurers “used the covertly obtained data to justify raising Texans’ insurance rates.”

Related article: Texas Lawsuit Alleges Allstate Illegally Collects Driver Data

The law firms Morgan & Morgan and Clifford Law Offices filed what appears to be the first class action a day later on Jan. 14., Sims v. The Allstate Corporation et al ( No. 1:25-cv-00407), which similarly alleges insurers “secretly use …consumer’s data to justify increasing their car insurance premiums, denying them coverage, or dropping them from coverage.”

The named plaintiff in the 24-page complaint, Demetric Sims, a resident of Fulton County, Ga., is an Allstate customer for auto and rental insurance, according to the complaint, which centers on the integration of Arity’s software development kit into an app not previously identified in the Texas complaint—the Sirius XM app.

Like the narrative of the Texas complaint, the Sims action states that the plaintiff “was never notified that his Driving Data was shared with Defendants.”

A separate 47-page filing reported by Bloomberg Law last week, Roque v. Allstate Corp. (No. 1:25-cv-00709), has similarities with the other ones. But here, unlike the situation in the Sims complaint, the named plaintiff Kaytlin Roque, a California resident, is not an Allstate customer.

“Plaintiff did not consent to Defendants’ conduct, nor does she have any relationship with the Defendants,” says the complaint filed on Jan. 21, 2025 by the law firm Kopelowitz Ostrow PA, which reveals that Roque has used Life360, a family driving network, on a regular basis since 2020. “Plaintiff’s car insurance policy was issued by Toggle, a subsidiary of Farmers Insurance, and her insurance premiums have drastically increased despite her good driving habits,” the filing continues, going on to state that the plaintiff might have expected steady year-to-year increases in premiums but not the jump she experienced given that she had no accidents or tickets.

She received a quote from Toggle in December 2024 that was almost triple what she was paying in 2022, prompting her to switch to another car insurance company.

“Upon information and belief, the increased premiums and inflated price quotes suffered by the Plaintiff are the result of insurers being provided with the uncontextualized, misleading, and unconsented-to personal Driving Data compiled by Defendants,” the filing alleges.

Central to all the complaints is the allegation that neither Arity, nor any of the third-party app publishers on their behalf, disclosed the collection of data to app users.

During an interview last year, before any of the actions was filed, Gary Hallgren, president of Arity, told Carrier Management that its partners get consent to collect location data to enable the driving services they offer in their app—like crash detection or fuel efficiency. “Every partner is responsible for its own consent process and notices, which is unique and tailored to fit how that partner interacts with its customers. When it comes to insurance companies needing access to this data, there’s a separate consent process where customers choose to share their driving data with their insurer for a quote,” he said.

Hallgren spoke to CM in the wake of a series of 2024 articles published in The New York Times, including one called, “Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored?” (subscription required). That article detailed the decision of a Life360 user to cancel her annual subscription when she found out that Arity, a company she was unfamiliar with, had access to her driving behavior data and could potentially share with insurers. During the CM interview, Hallgren talked about the individual and societal benefits of sharing insights from driving data with customers, noting that driving data can meaningfully lower premiums for many, and expressing the hope that insurers would “over-index on transparency and education” to help drivers understand the benefits.

Related article: A View Into the Future of Car Insurance: When Driver Scores Replace Credit Scores

Like the Texas lawsuit, the Roque complaint also alleges that the defendants bought driving data directly from car manufacturers such as Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, and Ram, and that plaintiffs were unaware of this.

The various filings also suggest that the driving data obtained by Arity through the third-party apps, in isolation, couldn’t be linked to specific individuals, alleging that app publishers licensed personal data to the defendants for this purpose.

“All members of the proposed Class are readily ascertainable. In the Driving Data and Personal Data they surreptitiously collected, Defendants have access to the addresses and other contact information for members of the Class, which can be used for providing notice to many Class Members,” the Sims filing notes.

On behalf of this class, the Sims filing specifically alleges violation of the Federal Wiretap Act, violation of the Computer Fraud And Abuse Act and invasion of privacy. The Roque action adds violation of the Federal Stored Communications Act and the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, among other causes of action.

Both class actions seek damages and injunctive relief aimed at preventing defendants from collecting driving data without consent in the future.