Your car knows what you did last summer!
Sourced from the daily tech newsletter “The Hustle” on September 7 2023:
Your sedan is probably eavesdropping. Cars were found to have the worst privacy policies of any product category analyzed by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation—even worse than your Google Nest or Apple Watch, a report released by the foundation yesterday said.
Unless your ’67 Chevy is still truckin’, you’re probably at risk. Mozilla found that the 25 vehicle brands analyzed, including Audi, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Ford, failed to hit basic privacy standards.
That means your car and the services you use in it, like GPS or satellite radio, can collect data such as your contact info, race, or immigration status, and any other personal inferences the systems can make about you based on where you go.
Nissan admitted that their vehicles collect data on drivers’ sex lives, but didn’t explain what data or how they get it.
Tesla was the worst-ranked car brand in terms of privacy. (Remember the totaled one that was shipped to Ukraine but remained connected to CNBC Executive Editor Jay Yarow’s Spotify account?)
The fine print: Most major automakers’ privacy policies have no opt-out choice and don’t offer encryption for your data. No US brands have a way to totally delete your info, and 19 car companies even specify that they can sell your data to brokers, marketers, or dealerships.
Great news, eh?
