Modern cars are kind of incredible. Getting behind the wheel of a new-ish car is like climbing into the cockpit of a spacecraft—especially if you’re old enough to remember when having a cassette player installed was the height of car luxury. These days, most cars offer navigation, touchscreen interfaces, music streaming, roadside assistance, and even assisted-driving features. They can tell you when you’re drifting out of your lane, when you’re exceeding the speed limit, and when something is dangerously close.
Unfortunately—and not surprisingly—they can also tell a lot of other people those things, along with an alarmingly long list of other stuff about you, your driving habits, and other information. The situation is so bad that cars have been called the “worst product category” in terms of privacy—which is saying something, in a world where smartphones and smart TVs exist.
The data
If your car is relatively new, it’s been designed as a spying superstar—modern cars typically have microphones, cameras, and tons of sensors collecting data. But it’s not just the sensors built into the car itself—there are also all the apps installed on the car’s interface, plus all the apps installed on your phone, which you probably link to the car via Bluetooth, giving away all sorts of privacy in the process. That means car manufacturers can potentially know the music you listen to, things you say inside the car, and the locations you look up on map apps. We’re firehosing private information to a car maker; we just don’t think about it. In fact, some car manufacturers even admitted to tracking your sexual activity in relation to your car, along with health data.
One immediate way this can impact you is with your insurance rates. General Motors was caught transmitting information from their cars to Lexis Nexis, a data broker that works with insurers to create risk profiles. The information included the dates and duration of every trip the driver took, the distance driven, and a record of hard braking, exceeding the speed limit, or taking turns too fast. The data was then used to raise drivers’ insurance rates—often to the mystification of drivers, who had no idea what their insurer was basing the new rates on.
After an outcry, GM stopped sending the data to Lexis Nexis—but it still has that data, and still has the capability to send it anywhere it wants, usually without alerting you.
Another way your data is being weaponized against you is advertising: It shouldn’t be a shock that your driving habits, destination history, and probably everything else can and will be sent to data brokers who in turn sell it to advertising partners. The end result is creepily targeted ads that know all about your driving habits and all kinds of associated data. And car manufacturers can also share your data with law enforcement, usually without your consent.
There can be a good use for this data, of course—diagnostic data can be sent to repair shops, and location data can be supplied to emergency services. But it’s the total lack of awareness that makes this so dangerous: You don’t know what’s being collected, how it’s being collected, or how it’s being used for or against your interests.
What you can do
So! Your car is a privacy nightmare. What can you do about it?
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Request reports. You can contact Lexis Nexis and request a consumer disclosure report, as well as Verisk, which offers similar services. Legally, they have to provide this upon request, and it will show you—in terrifying detail—how much data has been collected about your driving habits, if any. You can also plug your car’s vehicle identification number (VIN) into Vehicle Privacy Report and get a rundown of what data is being collected and by whom.
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Opt out. Go through your vehicle’s interface settings and look for any privacy- or advertising-related options. While you might want to send some data to your car manufacturer (so they can relay information to emergency services, for example), disable anything that looks at all suspicious. If there’s a separate car app on your phone, dig into that as well and do the same.
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Contact the manufacturer. You might get more done if you contact your car’s maker directly. Most car companies have web pages set up where you can opt out of data collection (General Motors’ is here, for example, and this page has a list of similar pages for other manufacturers). You can also call their customer service line and opt out with a real, live person.
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Contact your insurer. Ask them if they buy data like this and use it to assess your risk. You can’t make them stop, but if they are doing this you might consider finding a new insurance company that explicitly doesn’t do this.
