AUTONEWS

Goodbye to privacy: where does the data collected by your car go?

You turn the key or press a button and begin your daily journey to the office, school, or supermarket...What you might not realize is that, as you put your car in motion, a network of sensors, microphones, cameras, and antennas begins recording everything inside and out: your speed, your braking style, your usual Monday morning destination, or your favorite radio station. It's another "route," but this time invisible.

If you own a car and have limited time, what you have, in a sense, is a computer on wheels. Let's say it's a somewhat "indiscreet" computer. This is confirmed by a Mozilla Foundation study published in 2023, which analyzed the privacy policies of more than twenty brands. The report concluded that cars are the technological products that most invade their users' privacy. Even more so than dating apps! The research also revealed that many brands collect permanent geolocation information, conversations conducted via hands-free systems, navigation history on touchscreens, and even seatbelt usage patterns.

The official argument used by automakers for collecting this information is that they need it to improve driving safety, offer personalized services, and anticipate potential breakdowns. But, under the guise that everything is for our own good (and let's be clear that we agree that technology helps), every movement and every piece of data becomes a means of doing business for these automakers.

In fact, they make no secret of this, and the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association itself has repeatedly acknowledged that car data constitutes a new business model that could be more profitable than selling cars in the future.

Benefiting Sectors...Insurance companies, spare parts companies, auto repair shops, and marketing platforms intervene in this invisible circuit. Thus, a driver who makes short trips with sudden braking can receive policy proposals tailored to their profile. Or a car that's frequently used in the city might end up generating an early maintenance offer at the dealership. Or a car that regularly drives near certain shopping malls might receive geolocated advertising campaigns for its driver.

Either way, this isn't a bad thing (although some might disagree). What's worse is that the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity has already warned, in a 2022 report, that connected cars could become gateways for criminals. If something goes wrong, if server security is breached, your daily routes, your address, or the phone numbers you use on hands-free could be exposed. They could even see where you're driving in real time.

We don't want to overwhelm you with rules and laws on this topic, but it turns out that the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (which applies to everything, not just cars) establishes that any information that can identify a person must be under that person's control. But the reality is that the fine print of purchase contracts and connected systems in general is often written in a way that gives your car's brand almost absolute power.

Furthermore, a large portion of drivers still believe that data collected by the car (calls, destinations, etc.) stays inside the car and never leaves, as revealed by a survey conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany four years ago.

Will anyone rebel against this? As you can imagine, there's little anyone can do on their own, although some associations have already proposed that data be hosted on neutral platforms and that drivers can decide which companies have access to it. Politicians are also trying to limit this "marketing" of our data, which is why the European Commission is studying mechanisms to require that information generated by a car be transferred to different services only with the user's express and clear consent. Because we already know that we tend to click "Accept" as quickly as possible, without even reading the terms and conditions, just to save 20 seconds.

If all this worries you, get ready, because it's only going to get worse. With the arrival of increasingly advanced electric vehicles and semi-autonomous driving systems, cars increasingly need to collect your data in real time. This includes whether you get drowsy or take your eyes off the road, your habits, your routes...

Of course, everything has its positive side, which in this case comes, for example, with the car's ability to suggest faster routes or even call 911 in the event of an accident. But it's paradoxical that the car, which for so many years was synonymous with freedom, has become a kind of spy, watching us even when we're driving alone on a country road.

Autonews