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Car companies 'monetizing' your driving data
#1
Many new vehicles are "smarter" nowadays.  They are "connected" to a 'home base' NOT of your choosing. And they monitor your driving stats, collecting the data in their systems.  While there are certainly non-abusive, purely service enhancement purposes for this practice, it is being exploited another way... as a source of revenue.  Through "third-party" (you know, entities you have NO 'agreement' with) they are "selling" or "brokering" it to be bought up by insurance companies, who use it to justify rate hikes... significant rate hikes.

For the money hoarders... data is money. For the "insurance" industry... it is also money.  Profit, profit, everywhere...

From NYPost.com: Your car is secretly spying on you and driving your insurance rates through the roof: report
and
From ArsTechnica: Connected cars’ illegal data collection and use now on FTC’s “radar”

There are 'issues' here that transcend commerce... especially since it involves a foundational aspect of human rights; privacy.  

Still.... using the "smart" features of driving apps embedded in your vehicle are subject to "user agreements" which often couch references to "third-party" access to it.  Often characterized as benign, it shows that they have no compunctions about the idea that the data belongs to them, not the driver... thus they can use it... and 'sell' it.
 

The Federal Trade Commission's Office of Technology has issued a warning to automakers that sell connected cars. Companies that offer such products "do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service," it wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not "outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards," the FTC wrote.


Unfortunately, in true "US commerce-style"....
 

The FTC is not taking specific action against any automaker at this point. Instead, the blog post is meant to be a warning to the industry. It says that "connected cars have been on the FTC's radar for years," although the agency appears to have done very little other than hold workshops in 2013 and 2018, as well as publishing guidance for consumers reminding them to wipe the data from their cars before selling them.


I have to wonder if you buy a car with the previous owners data not wiped... can it affect your insurance rating?
 

The FTC says that automakers and other businesses must protect users' data against illegal collection, use, and disclosure. It points to recent enforcement actions against companies in other sectors that have illegally collected or used geolocation data, surreptitiously disclosed sensitive user data, and illegally used sensitive data for automated decisions.

The FTC says the easiest way to comply is to not collect the data in the first place.



I hope they get this under control... I mean without just "caving" to the industry lobby.
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#2
New cars are basically huge smart phones that you ride in. None of what is mentioned in the op has not been implemented in smart phones for years. Why complain now? That horse left the barn years ago.

How do you think they get the traffic data for navigation apps? They are already tracking your phone movements.
Does anyone know the minimum safe distance of ignorance?
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#3
Just how much information about you, is actually "yours?"

The car companies are profiting from it... how much of that is the product of an exchange of money for goods?  DO you get a discount for letting them sell it?  Can you get it back if you don't want to do business with them anymore?  And if you 'opt out' does the product you pay for cost more, or less... or does it just stop working?

This isn't about geolocation.  It is about sovereignty over who you are, who actually owns your data, and who can sell it to whom... 

If you're OK with that... it's not a problem.  I'm not.

Information that comes from me is mine... it's not for sale by proxy.
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#4
I could not agree more that your data is yours to decide how to use. But your phone already does all this tracking. The only thing it doesn't know that your car does is things like are your headlights on, is your oil still good or needs changing. Little stuff like that. Where you are, how fast you go, how hard do you accelerate and brake is allready tracked in your phone.
Does anyone know the minimum safe distance of ignorance?
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#5
(05-17-2024, 10:37 PM)BeyondKnowledge Wrote: I could not agree more that your data is yours to decide how to use. But your phone already does all this tracking. The only thing it doesn't know that your car does is things like are your headlights on, is your oil still good or needs changing. Little stuff like that. Where you are, how fast you go, how hard do you accelerate and brake is allready tracked in your phone.

I wonder if they have been selling that too?   And who else is a 'client' of the 'third-party' 'brokers?'

Seems clear that the data sieves planted firmly in our hands were always collecting our data, and most everyone has been 'conditioned' to poo-poo away any 'concerns,' because: "who cares?"

No matter what, this is the kind of abuse that I expected someone like the government to protect its citizens from... except it's "BIG" commerce... that's more important to the banksters than anything else.  And what the banksters want, the banksters get in our 'governments' rule book.
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