Your Car Is Spying on You
Modern cars are simply incredible. Getting behind the wheel of a new car is like climbing into the cockpit of a spaceship, especially if you’re old enough to remember when installing a cassette player was the height of automotive luxury. These days, most cars offer navigation, touchscreen interfaces, music streaming, roadside assistance, and even driving assistance features. They can tell you when you’re drifting out of your lane, when you’re exceeding the speed limit, and when something is dangerously close.
Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), they may also tell a lot of other people about it, as well as a frighteningly long list of other things about you, your driving habits and other information. The situation is so bad that cars have been called the ” worst product category ” for privacy, which is saying something in a world where smartphones and smart TVs exist.
Data
If your car is relatively new, it’s designed to be a spy superstar: modern cars are usually equipped with microphones, cameras, and a variety of sensors that collect data. But it’s not just about the sensors built into the car itself – there are also all the apps installed on the car’s interface, as well as all the apps installed on your phone, which you probably connect to the car via Bluetooth, providing all sorts of privacy in the car. process. This means car manufacturers could potentially know what music you listen to, what you say in the car and the places you search in map apps. We share personal information with the automaker; we just don’t think about it. In fact, some car manufacturers have even admitted to tracking your sexual activity in relation to your car, as well as health data.
One immediate way this can affect you is through your insurance rates. General Motors was caught sharing information about its vehicles with Lexis Nexis , a data broker that works with insurers to create risk profiles. The information included the dates and duration of each trip the driver took, the distance traveled, and records of heavy braking, exceeding the speed limit or turning too quickly. This data was then used to increase drivers’ insurance rates – often to the confusion of drivers who had no idea what their insurance company was basing the new rates on.
After the protests, GM stopped sending data to Lexis Nexis, but the company still has the data and still has the ability to send it anywhere, usually without warning you.
Another way your data can be used against you is through advertising: It shouldn’t be a shock that your driving habits, destination history, and possibly everything else can and will be sent to data brokers, who will in turn sell it to advertising partners . The end result is terribly targeted advertising that knows everything about your driving habits and all sorts of related data. Car manufacturers may also share your data with law enforcement agencies, usually without your consent.
Of course, this data can be put to good use: diagnostic data can be sent to repair shops, and location data can be sent to emergency services. But it is complete ignorance that makes it so dangerous: you don’t know what is being collected, how it is being collected, and how it is being used for or against your interests.
What can you do
So! Your car is a privacy nightmare. What can you do about it?
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Request reports. You can contact Lexis Nexis to request a consumer disclosure report , as well as Verisk , which offers similar services. By law they must provide this upon request, and it will show you – in horrifying detail – how much data, if any, has been collected about your driving habits. You can also enter your vehicle’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the Vehicle Privacy Report and get a summary of what data is collected and by whom.
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Dodge. Review your car’s interface settings and look for any settings related to privacy or advertising. While you might want to send some data to your car’s manufacturer (for example, so they can relay the information to emergency services), turn off anything that looks suspicious. If you have a separate car app on your phone, dig into it and do the same.
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Contact the manufacturer. You can do more by contacting your vehicle’s manufacturer directly. Most car companies have web pages where you can opt out of data collection (for example, General Motors is here , and this page has a list of similar pages for other manufacturers). You can also call their customer service and opt out with a real live person.
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Contact your insurer. Ask them if they buy this kind of data and use it to assess your risk. You can’t force them to stop, but if they do, you might want to consider finding a new insurance company that doesn’t explicitly do this.