My car knows more about me than my husband

Don’t you love getting a new car? The new car smell. Everything is clean and shiny. There is no dog hair, spilled coffee, or permanent dent marks from the booster seat. But your new car comes with a big secret, it is a covert surveillance machine.  It is tracking everything you do – driving fast - or don’t do – brake nice and slowly.  It also collects all kinds of information about you and not all of it has to do with your car.  A new study from the Mozilla Foundation found that 25 different car companies offered owners of their vehicles “little or no control over their personal data” and 84% of them share this data with other companies. 

They found all 25 car brands failed to meet even the minimum privacy standards. Of these, 76% claimed they had the right to sell that personal data and 56% share user information with the government or law enforcement.    It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy.  

Your car collects information about how fast you drive, what you listen to while driving, and everywhere you go.  Car companies collect information about you from the car, from the phone you plug into the car, and other services.  It then makes inferences about you and can sell any of this data to insurance companies, data brokers, dealers, and other service providers.

In addition to the data elements a car owner might expect like engine conditions, diagnostics, and dashboard lights, they also collect data elements like driver fatigue, heart rate, driving style evaluation percentage, safety driving score as a percentage, and grade given for late night driving over time (whatever this is).  Plus, there are up to 28 data elements about the trip including the driver’s name, harsh braking, harsh acceleration, sharp turn, overspeed, and maximum speed.  For more information, check out this article too.  The Markup – Who is Collecting Data from Your Car.  

So the next question you might ask, “is this legal?”  It’s complicated, but the short answer is – yes, it is legal – at least in the US.  Here in the US, we have no Federal privacy law so because of this void, some states have enacted privacy legislation.  Most people agree that California has the strongest laws but fundamentally as long as they ‘disclose’ the fact that they are collecting, sharing, and selling this information – it’s legal. “Is This Even Legal?”

Here is another resource from the Guardian.