From The Verge · Andrew Hawkins · · 2m
Your car is selling your data
Automakers are quietly logging how you drive and selling it, and Washington's fixes miss the point.
In brief
Automakers are quietly logging how you drive and selling it, and Washington's fixes miss the point. Access and deletion rights don't help much when the real problem is how much your car collects in the first place. Originally reported by The Verge.
The FTC drew a line
Earlier this year the FTC hit General Motors with a five-year ban on selling customer data to consumer reporting agencies and third-party brokers. It was an unprecedented penalty.
What GM was collecting
For years GM logged how often drivers sped and whether they drove at night, then sold it to brokers who build risk profiles for insurers.
Consent nobody noticed
Most drivers had no idea. They agreed by signing up for an OnStar connected services plan, which switched on a feature called Smart Driver.
Rates went up
GM passed the data to LexisNexis and Verisk, both insurance industry brokers. A 2024 New York Times investigation found drivers whose premiums rose because of it.
“some drivers said their insurance rates went up as a result of the data collection”
Every automaker, not one
Mozilla Foundation researchers read the privacy policies of every major car company in 2023. All of them failed.
“Every single one had "horrible privacy and security"”
Four policies, one car
Buyers accept overlapping terms for the vehicle, the connected services, the phone app, and the loan financing. Every one of them collects something.
“And so it was really overwhelming trying to understand what was going on”
Worse than your phone
On a phone you can find the privacy settings and change them. In a car the collection is scattered across systems and documents, so almost nobody can tell what is happening.
A bill that misses
House Republicans introduced the DRIVER Act, arguing that if you own the vehicle you own its data. It also lets automakers keep collecting and selling to brokers.
“if you own the vehicle, you should own the data it generates”
Deletion is not prevention
Privacy advocates want less collected up front. Access and deletion rights just hand the driver a long, tedious chase after data that should never have been taken.
The Freedom Car
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pitched a right to drive disconnected, banning mandates for self-driving systems or wireless data. Nobody was proposing such mandates.
Money keeps it going
Buyers want simpler cars, no tracking, no ads on the dashboard. Automakers won't stop while the data economy keeps paying them to collect.
“there's little reason for automakers to voluntarily abandon the practice”
In short
Access and deletion rights don't help much when the real problem is how much your car collects in the first place.
