You’ve heard of phones and cameras tracking your every move, but what about your car?
A new survey by the Mozilla Foundation called modern cars a “privacy nightmare,” adding that 84% of the car brands they researched for the survey share personal data while 76% said they can sell your personal data.
“Every single car brand that we reviewed all 25 earn our ‘privacy not included warning label’ to start with because they're all collecting an insane amount of information,” Jen Caltrider, Mozilla’s Program Director, told L.A.'s Morning News’ Vicky Moore and Mike Simpson. “Things like your sexual activity, your sex life, your genetic information, where you go when you go- and they share it. They sell it. And something that's even more scary to me is a lot of them say that they could share it with law enforcement and government based on something as simple as an informal request.”
The study found that the cars collect your information based on your overall interactions with your car, including which apps you use, the connected services you use, and any “third party sources,” such as Sirius XM.
Caltrider, who also led the research in the study, added that cars “made in the past 3 to 5 years have really become computers on wheels.”
“Interestingly, there was even a company that had a privacy policy that was for cars 2019 and newer and a different privacy for their cars that was 2018 and older,” she said. “So even the car companies are kind of acknowledging that, ‘hey, we've got computers on wheels now, we can collect a lot more, personal information and data on you’ and they have privacy policies indicate that.”
She also said car dealers are encouraging potential car buyers to download and install the app that connects to the car.
“ I have a colleague that just bought a car and after she purchased the car, the person that sold her, the car begged her, I think that's fair to say, to download and install the app and accept all conditions because the car dealer pay was based on whether they could get the buyer to do that,” she said. “And so yes, consumers are being pushed very hard into downloading the apps and accepting the connected services and buying these cars that are connected without being given a lot of information or control or choice over how their data is shared or collected or sold or used.”
Out of the 25 car brands the Mozilla Foundation reviewed, they found Tesla to be the worst, followed by Nissan, and Hyundai.
You can look at the survey here.