I got one of those “safe driver” transceivers to save money on insurance. It required an app, which I figured would be like a simple bridge that uploads the data from the device to the server.
Holy mackerel, was it full of additional spyware. I was already a little uneasy sending driving data to a private company, but this would potentially be sending constant phone tracking. No thanks!
Some companies have an accelerometer in the device itself. This one is just a BT chip that pulls the location and acceleration data on your phone itself, as well as a ton of other permissions and invasive data trackers, as well as an agreement that the insurance co can share collected data with third party partners. Unfortunately these days it’s pretty boilerplate stuff.