One of the cold realities technology has brought into our lives is how easy and efficient it is for various entities to gather information on just about every facet of our lives. And not just gather it but sell it, too.
A recent study from the Mozilla Foundation looked at one burgeoning source of private information and found that not only are people unaware the data is being collected, but it’s also being sold to third parties and opened to government snoops and law enforcement with little to no fuss.
That source of data: your car.
From the report, we learn that of 25 auto manufacturers the Foundation studied were so-called “privacy nightmares” and that cars fall into the “worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.”
Oh dandy. How bad could this really be? Take a single example of how much information car makers collect on you:
They can collect personal information from how you interact with your car, the connected services you use in your car, the car’s app (which provides a gateway to information on your phone), and can gather even more information about you from third party sources like Sirius XM or Google Maps. It’s a mess. The ways that car companies collect and share your data are so vast and complicated that we wrote an entire piece on how that works. The gist is: they can collect super intimate information about you — from your medical information, your genetic information, to your “sex life” (seriously), to how fast you drive, where you drive, and what songs you play in your car — in huge quantities. They then use it to invent more data about you through “inferences” about things like your intelligence, abilities, and interests.
Naturally, that level of data is worth a lot of money to someone and so car makers sell it…and you have next to no control over any of it. The Mozilla Foundation writes that “car brands often do whatever they can legally get away with to your personal data.”
The Mozilla researchers ranked the car makers “from bad to worst” in terms of privacy. Coming in dead last: Tesla. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the electric car is in many ways a laptop computer on wheels.
But then there were the big Japanese and Korean car makers, who managed to take snooping to an entirely new level:
Nissan earned its second-to-last spot for collecting some of the creepiest categories of data we have ever seen. It’s worth reading the review in full, but you should know it includes your “sexual activity.” Not to be outdone, Kia also mentions they can collect information about your “sex life” in their privacy policy. Oh, and six car companies say they can collect your “genetic information” or “genetic characteristics.” Yes, reading car privacy policies is a scary endeavor.
Go read the entire report. And remember that the next time you get behind the wheel, your car won’t just be taking you where you want to go. It will be snooping on you (for profit!) every inch of the way.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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How can my 2006 Nissan Rogue have data on me OR our other SUV a Lexus RX 350 2017