Your Car is Following You - How to Reclaim Your Data Privacy on the Open Road
Your Car is Following You - How to Reclaim Your Data Privacy on the Open Road 🚗🔍
Today’s vehicles know where you live, when you travel, and your driving habits. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stop our cars from sharing data. Cars from a decade or more ago are vastly different from the vehicles on the market today. Today’s vehicles rely heavily on computers, sensors, satellite communications, mobile technology, the cloud, and systems that not only monitor the vehicle’s health but can also monitor you. But have you ever considered the information your car collects and what happens to it?
Modern smart car technologies commonly include infotainment systems, which are dashboard displays with useful applications including vehicle and driving information, weather, music, and contacts; these may also include voice assistants for hands-free control. Satellite navigation/GPS systems assist drivers in reaching their destination, showing the best routes and traffic warnings. Your vehicle may also include mapping functions, typically based on LiDAR technology, that scan your environment to create 3D maps for parking, hazard detection, and driving assistance. Mobile device synchronization allows connecting your Android or iOS smartphone to your car via Bluetooth or a USB port for hands-free use. Onboard cameras, both in and outside of the vehicle, are used as dashcams to help you park or monitor driver movement. Black boxes, also known as telematics or Event Data Recorder (EDR) boxes, are small GPS and sensor-based devices that can be installed in cars, with their main goal being to monitor driver behavior.
The volume of data collected depends on your car’s model and manufacturer, as well as on what you’ve agreed to in the T&Cs of any services you use. In a matter of minutes, your actions could have revealed the condition of your car, your home address, the locations you frequent, how you drive, your travel and entertainment preferences, your contacts, your mobile device data, and more. Your location and destination are tracked by GPS systems installed for navigation, satellite navigation, theft tracking, and monitoring business fleets. Researchers have found that modern cars with Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) broadcast unique IDs that can be captured by anyone with a wireless receiver, allowing them to learn your travel patterns. Your driving habits are also recorded, as many manufacturers collect such data for risk profiling. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed the inclusion of camera-based driver monitoring systems in future vehicles, which could mean that you will be remotely monitored every time you step into your vehicle. Ford recently filed a patent for an internal camera capable of reading your lips, gestures, and facial expressions, and your voice and audio commands may be stored by speech recognition software. If you choose to sync your smartphone with your car via Bluetooth, this could mean that contact data, text messages, and call histories–including logs of calls when your handset is not connected to your car–may be recorded and stored.
Several interesting cases and research studies reveal where driver data has ended up, including in the hands of organizations you wouldn’t necessarily expect and that you didn’t knowingly consent to. The FTC has warned manufacturers against unfair data-use and sharing practices. According to Mozilla, many car manufacturers use deliberately vague language in their privacy policies to grant themselves unconditional freedom to collect, store, and even share and sell your data. Everything from telemetrics to camera footage and infotainment profiles could end up in a vehicle manufacturer’s servers. There have been cases of insurers purchasing driver data to generate policy pricing and create risk profiles; usage programs rely on your vehicle’s telemetry to calculate insurance rates; General Motors allegedly sold user geolocation data.
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