Your new car is actually spying on you: The creepy, unpalatable truth.
Carmakers are officially the worst consumer brands when it comes to unwanted surveillance and securing your personal data, but it goes far deeper than you expect. Here’s how and why your car is probably spying on you…
Car companies really do suck when it comes to protecting your personal data.
How badly do they suck? Well, it’s by no means an accident. In fact, it’s highly deliberate and actually quite profitable.
The most inequitable thing about them doing this, apart from putting your personal security at risk, is that your data actually has value. Yet car companies acquire it for free and generally without your knowledge or and/or consent, notionally. Then, they make millions out of it.
This doesn't seem fair somehow. Carmakers collect too much of your personal information - continuously - it's badly secured, you have no control over it, and the majority of them continue living with no qualms whatsoever about whoring your private information out to the highest bidder. These scumbags include data brokers, law enforcement and unspecified third parties. Tis is not my personal opinion, either, because it's independently verified.
Mozilla, the company that built the Firefox Internet Browser from 20 years ago, which made competitors quite cranky at the time, if memory serves, today operates as a kind of Marvel's Avenger online. In their recent car industry audit the headlines kind of speak for themselves:
That's from the Mozilla Foundation, September the 6th. Read the Mozilla source article here >>
Not only has Mozilla conducted this research, but they’ve also dug down rather deep to unearth the worst offenders, and publicly scald them, so to speak.
You can find the original Mozilla privacy naughty list for carmakers here >>
The Church of Automotive Scientology (AKA Tesla) was beyond just terrible at this, because of course they are.
Tesla was only the second entity ever to receive an official five-star anti-consumer privacy fail score from Mozilla in all evaluated privacy categories. The first was an AI chat bot reviewed earlier in 2023, so I guess in a sense, it's official: Tesla is just as malevolent as Skynet.
I suppose it's only malevolence if you don't sip the Tesla Kool-Aid (not a real thing). If you do, it's really just electric Jesus loving you and wanting to take you up to electric Utopia: just plug in and listen to the harps - it's all good.
But to be fair, 16 other carmakers are also properly guilty of this invasion of privacy type of conduct here.
Mozilla's list of mongrel mainstream carmakers that suck out your private data for-profit includes Volkswagen. No real surprises there given Volkswagen is a criminal organization that thought it was quite okay to kill people prematurely with excess illegal pollution simply because they overarching obligations to their stakeholders. This was enacted, of course, in a despicable criminal conspiracy which is what Dieselgate was - and they're not sorry, they're sorry they got caught.
Toyota and its lame attempt to fake Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, it's there. Of course Toyota is the biggest manufacturer of automotive misleading or deceptive conduct in Australia - the company that broke the ‘unbreakable’ Hilux. Oh, What a Feeling.
Ford and its Lexus, Lincoln, are on the naughty list too, hilariously. But what’s an entirely unfunny fact is that Ford thought it was a nice idea to run an illegal detention centre, in which employees were tortured, in Argentina.
I could not make that up and the most recent lawsuit over that, that I could find, was filed in 2006, so hardly ancient history.
Also on the list are:
Mercedes-Benz, in addition to that small concentration camp issue in the late 1930s;
Honda and its Lexus, Acura;
Kia and its big sister Hyundai are on there;
the barbershop quartet of General Motors: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac;
and of course Nissan, which has trouble with most automotive orienteering demands of the modern world.
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HOW YOUR MODERN CAR SPIES ON YOU
Isn’t it bizarre how life imitates art in such egregious and unexpectedly accurate ways.
According to Mozilla popular global brands including BMW, Ford, Toyota, Tesla, Kia and Subaru can collect deeply personal data such as sexual activity immigration status race facial expressions weight health and genetic information and where you drive.
Researchers found data is being gathered by sensors, microphones, cameras and the phones and devices drivers connect to their cars, as well as by car apps, company websites, dealerships and vehicle telematics. Brands can then share or sell this data to third parties…
Car brands can also take much of this data and use it to develop inferences about a driver's intelligence, abilities, characteristics, preferences and more.
so you think you're in a cocoon right a warm comfy safe space listening to Celine Dion (Rammstein, whatever) singing along, you're actually in a kind of digital North Korea.
In my estimation, what's happening here is not merely data collection - you are being properly spied upon.
The very worst offender is Nissan. The Japanese car manufacturer admits in their privacy policy to collecting a wide range of information including sexual activity, health diagnosis data and genetic data, but doesn't specify how.
They say they can share and sell consumers preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behaviour, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitudes to data brokers, law enforcement and other third parties.
Where you travel, who you travel with and what you do there could be up for grabs - even in your most private moments…
Not to be outdone, Hyundai is also quite happy, apparently, to throw your privacy under the bus, so to speak, with the cops:
Hyundai’s privacy policy says, for example, that they can share data with law enforcement and governments based on “formal or informal” requests.
Kia’s policy says they may share data in many scenarios “if, in our good faith opinion, such is required or permitted by law.” In other words: The threshold for sharing incredibly sensitive information is very low.
That's not in the brochure. But it sure puts a whole new slant on such things as ‘the right to silence’ and the concept of being innocent until proven guilty.
According to Mozilla:
Kia’s privacy policy states they can collect information about your “sex life”.
What's so hard about putting the customer first by demanding to see a warrant or a court order before dropping your (the customer’s) trousers and just handing it all over — you corporate weasels.
You might be wondering why this matters. The reason is you might run some proprietary car brand app or you connect your phone to the car, which then logs the GPS data or sends the internal camera data back to the car maker central, activates the microphone and sends the audio back, or whatever.
There's some form of consent involved. You've got a tick a box, you’ve agreed to the Hyundai, Nissan, Tesla, Toyota or whatever app having access to your phone's location data, the camera and the microphone.
Then the cops come knocking and Hyundai or Nissan are happy to hand over all your deeply personal information so they can use the data to pin something on you when in fact you were just driving past some location to get a coffee. But they’ve got a snippet of audio from the microphone where you admit that ‘you never liked the guy’. Prosecutors love that.
The point being this is an in-practice erosion of your common law right to silence and/or to decline to consent to be searched, or something similar. You might even be having meetings with a friend, or even an old friend as you go through the motions of some kind of marital break-up and the acquisition of your personal data gets used to smear your other good reputation as an honest, good person and the crazy ex gets full custody of your kids.
Where does it end?
Watch the full report to find out just how deep the carmaker data spying and privacy rabbit hole goes…
Mazda3 should make you reconsider that heavy, impractical SUV or the long list of overpriced prestige German cars. If you’re money smart, you’ll put this sensible, stylish small hatch or sedan on your shortlist for a test drive.