Your car is not protected by privacy laws
Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2023 8:10 am
This is interesting, there's no way to opt out either...
BOSTON (AP) — Most major car manufacturers admit they may be selling your personal information — though they are vague on the buyers, a new study finds, and half say they would share it with the government or law enforcement without a court order.
The proliferation of sensors in automobiles — from telematics to fully digitized control consoles — has made them prodigious datacollection hubs.
But drivers are given little or no control over the personal data their vehicles collect, researchers for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Wednesday in their latest “Privacy Not Included” survey. Security standards are also vague, a big concern given automakers’ track record of susceptibility to hacking.
“Cars seem to have really flown under the privacy radar and I’m really hoping that we can help remedy that because they are truly awful,” said Jen Caltrider, the study’s research lead. “Cars have microphones and people have all kinds of sensitive conversations in them. Cars have cameras that face inward and outward.”
Unless they opt for a used, pre-digital model, car buyers “just don’t have a lot of options,” Caltrider said.
Cars scored worst for privacy among more than a dozen product categories — including fitness trackers, reproductive-health apps, smart speakers and other connected home appliances — that Mozilla has studied since 2017.
Not one of the 25 car brands whose privacy notices were reviewed — chosen for their popularity in Europe and North America — met the minimum privacy standards of Mozilla, which promotes open-source, public interest technologies and maintains the Firefox browser. By contrast, 37% of the mental health apps the non-profit reviewed this year did.
Nineteen automakers say they can sell your personal data, their notices reveal. Half will share your information with government or law enforcement in response to a “request” — as opposed to requiring a court order. Only two — Renault and Dacia, which are not sold in North America — offer drivers the option to have their data deleted.
The automakers are vague on disclosing to whom they are selling what they collect, though the researchers have little doubt it includes data brokers, marketers and dealers. Partners with installed products and services, including SiriusXM, Google Maps and Onstar, are also amassing data.
“Increasingly, most cars are wiretaps on wheels,” said Albert Fox Cahn, a technology and human rights fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. “The electronics that drivers pay more and more money to install are collecting more and more data on them and their passengers.”
“There is something uniquely invasive about transforming the privacy of one’s car into a corporate surveillance space,” he added.