Man's Insurance Mysteriously Goes Up. Then He Realizes The Dealership Sold His Driving Data—Then He Finds The Tracker

A Corpus Christi, Texas, contractor who watched his insurance premium climb year after year without collecting a single ticket found a tracking device in his Jeep Gladiator.

Down 2 Earth Roofing and Remodeling (@d2earthroofandremodeling), who runs a roofing and remodeling business in the city, posted the clip, which has been watched more than 330,700 times.

He says he bought the 2023 Jeep Gladiator about two years ago from a Lithia-owned Dodge dealership on Everhart Road and that the premium increases never made sense to him.

"My insurance has been going higher and higher and higher, and I haven't had one ticket," he says. "Not one. No tickets."

Texas Driver Discovers Tracker In Jeep Gladiator

He says what sent him looking was a video he watched about a month earlier.

"This guy was talking about the dealership selling our data to our insurance companies," he says.

He adds that when he checked under the dash, he found the factory diagnostic connector unplugged, with a substitute in its place.

"This is the OBD port, which is underneath there. That's the factory one that was disconnected," he says, before pointing to a black connector. "This black one was put in its place, so it still looks factory." A white lead ran from there to what he calls "this little funny box."

He is careful to head off the obvious explanation. Subprime dealerships routinely fit GPS units that can disable a car when payments are missed, and he says that is not what this is.

"I bought this financed through a bank. The bank paid it off in full, and now I pay the bank," he says. "This is not one of them dealerships where if I don't make my payment, my car is turned off."

A commenter who said they install these units for a living confirmed what he was looking at.
"What you wanna look for is what they call a bridge connector, that's what that black connector is," wrote Up and Aktive, who described themselves as a certified GPS installer. "It's a bridge from the original port to the actual GPS port."

Another commenter, Sarah Camille-Vu, said she used to work at a dealership and could "type in the number code and find out exactly where that vehicle is."

Gallery: 2023 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon High Velocity

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Source: Jeep

Are Dealerships ‘Illegally’ Selling Driving Data To Insurance Companies?

The broader claim, that dealers are selling driving data to insurers, describes something regulators have documented in detail, though the proven cases involve carmakers rather than dealer-fitted boxes.

In August 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued General Motors over what his office called "the unlawful collection and sale of over 1.5 million Texans' private driving data to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent." The suit alleged GM sold the information to companies that generated "Driving Scores" and sold those scores on to insurers, and that customers were pushed into enrolling in OnStar Smart Driver during vehicle onboarding.

Federal regulators followed. The Federal Trade Commission finalized an order with GM and OnStar in January, settling allegations they "collected, used, and sold consumers' precise geolocation data and driving behavior data from millions of vehicles" without proper consent. The order runs 20 years and imposes "a five-year ban on GM disclosing consumers' geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies."

None of that involves Jeep or its parent company, and the video does not establish where the box in his truck sent anything or whether his insurer ever saw it. The creator makes a further claim in passing that such a device can listen to conversations in the cabin, which nothing in the video supports.

Dealership/Manufacturer Geotrackers: How To Find Out What Is On File

The FTC's phrase "consumer reporting agencies" is the useful thread for anyone worried about this, because it means the data lands somewhere a driver can legally demand to see. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau notes that under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, "all consumer reporting companies are required to provide you a copy of the information in your report if you request it," and that the three big credit bureaus "aren't the only companies that collect information on you." The agency publishes a list of the specialty firms, which is where driving histories tend to sit.

The prevailing theory in the thread was that he agreed to it without realizing it.
"It's in your signed contract that you don't read," wrote luvitliveitshareit.
Southerncracker made the same point at more length, describing purchase paperwork as "almost like a short novel of legal jargon most of us don't understand."

Others picked at his account. Luna Grimm noted that a financed vehicle is not a fully owned one: "He said the car lot was paid and he pays the bank, so it's not a free and clear title."

She.Me.Her_Yo had a different instinct entirely: "Don't throw it away. Use it in your court case."

A few described their own uneasy moments. "Got into an accident one day, the next day the dealership called me to ask me if I'm ok and if I need a new car," wrote pianoman928.

A commenter posting as Jacqui said a Toyota dealership had done the same to her after a minor bump and then dropped the subject.

Motor1 reached out to Down 2 Earth Roofing and Remodeling via TikTok direct message and to Lithia Motors and Stellantis, Jeep’s parent company, via email for comment. We'll be sure to update this if they respond.

 

 

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