Are Car Makers Really in the Data Collection Biz?

According to Bing Chat, there were 15.6 million cars and light trucks sold in the US in 2013, 16.5 million in 2014, 17+ million in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, but only 14 million in 2020 and 13 million in 2021 and 2022.

But something else changed between 2013 and 2022.

By 2022 almost every car and light truck sold was not really a vehicle, but rather, it was a network of typically at least 100 computers connected to the Internet.

So what is a car company to do in light of shrinking sales.

Well, obviously, get into the business of selling your data.

I am sure that you read the fine print before you bought your new car. Wait; they didn’t tell you about the fact that they were hoovering up all of this data? Is not telling you that they are selling your data a deceptive trade practice?

And here is what one car maker says about opting out from the data collection process:

IF YOU WISH FOR <car maker> SERVICES TO STOP TRANSMITTING AND/OR COLLECTING INFORMATION FROM YOUR VEHICLE, PLEASE CONTACT CONSUMER AFFAIRS AT 1-844-8**-****, WHO CAN DETERMINE WHETHER YOUR <car’s> SERVICE IS COLLECTING AND TRANSMITTING SUCH INFORMATION AND WHETHER <car’s> SERVICES HARDWARE CAN BE DEACTIVATED FROM YOUR VEHICLE.

In several states, including California and Colorado, there is a law that prohibits companies from using dark patterns. A dark pattern is a process where it is harder for a consumer to do something that they want to do (like stopping the collection of data) than it is to do something the company wants to do (like collecting that data).

The California Privacy Protection Agency is starting an investigation on car makers privacy practices. Expect more investigations.

Cars with driver assist capabilities like Tesla, also have a number of cameras which take, collectively, billions of pictures a year. INCLUDING PICTURES OF YOU, IN THE CAR. AND PEOPLE ON THE STREET WHO CLEARLY HAVE NOT CONSENTED TO ANYTHING. While not all of them get sent to Telsa (the bandwidth needed would be immense), owners don’t have any control of this and Tesla is not being transparent about what they are doing. I am not picking on Tesla; what they are doing is no different than many other car makers. They just do it in greater quantity.

But car makers aren’t the only ones. Insurance companies say that they will – maybe – give you a discount if you let them have your driving data. That data includes things like dates, times, precise location, speed, braking, direction, destination and a bunch of other data. At least the insurance companies are being a little more transparent about what they are doing.

There is a BILL in the California legislature would require car makers to alert drivers when they collect images from in-vehicle cameras and outlaw the sale of those pictures to third parties or use it for advertising. This is just a bill in committee.

The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium is reporting that industry estimates show the connected vehicle “ecosystem” will need to transfer up to 10 billion gigabytes of data to the cloud each month, which it said is “vastly more than networks can handle today.”

It is likely that auto makers, in the future, will make more money from selling your data than from selling you cars. Consider that.

Credit: The Record

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