{"id":40579,"date":"2023-09-07T16:34:48","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T20:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=40579"},"modified":"2023-09-14T08:23:20","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T12:23:20","slug":"mozilla-report-on-auto-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/07\/mozilla-report-on-auto-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mozilla Report on Auto Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mozilla<\/a> (via Dan Gillmor<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Car makers have been bragging about their cars being “computers on wheels” for years<\/a> to promote their advanced features. However, the conversation about what driving a computer means for its occupants’ privacy hasn’t really caught up. While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines. Machines that, because of their all those brag-worthy bells and whistles, have an unmatched power to watch, listen, and collect information about what you do and where you go in your car.<\/p>

All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label -- making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

That’s right: every car brand we looked at collects more personal data than necessary and uses that information for a reason other than to operate your vehicle and manage their relationship with you.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I didn’t see where it says how<\/em> the data gets back to the car companies. Do vehicles have cellular connections to phone home, even when there are no user-facing features that can use this connection? Does it get transferred via a direct connection when you take the car to a dealer?<\/p>\n\n

Surely, using CarPlay is better than using the built-in software. But I’m seeing conflicting reports about whether CarPlay data stays on the phone<\/a> or needs to be manually deleted<\/a> when you sell a car or return a rental.<\/p> \n\n

Thomas Germain<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Mozilla said it was unable to determine whether the brands encrypt any of the data they collect, and only Mercedes-Benz responded to the organization’s questions.<\/p>

Mozilla also found that many car brands engage in “privacy washing,” or presenting consumers with information that suggests they don’t have to worry about privacy issues when the exact opposite is true. Many leading manufacturers are signatories to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation’s “Consumer Privacy Protection Principles<\/a>.” According to Mozilla, these are a non-binding set of vague promises organized by the car manufacturers themselves.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Questions around consent are essentially a joke as well. Subaru, for example, says that by being a passenger in the car, you are considered a “user” who has given the company consent to harvest information about you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It is entirely possible these privacy policies reflect an overly broad approach, that cars do not actually collect vast amounts of personal information, and that the data brokers who have partnered with automakers are marketing themselves more ambitiously than they are able to deliver. But is that better? Automakers either collect vast amounts of private information which they share with data brokers and use for targeted advertising efforts, or they are lying and only wish<\/em> they were collecting and sharing vast amounts of private information.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n