While you’ve got your eye on the road, your car has its spyware on you — and is reporting your every move back to Detroit, Tokyo, or Stuttgart. According to a new study by the Mozilla Foundation, “cars are the worst product category” the organization has ever reviewed for privacy, collecting and reporting “how fast you drive, where you drive, and what songs you play in your car,” and even whatever details they can glean about your sex life.
Of the 25 car brands analyzed by Mozilla, the overwhelming majority — 84% — sold car owners’ data to third parties. That’s 21 out of 25, for those keeping score at home.
You didn’t think all those cameras and sensors in recent vintage cars were there for your convenience, did you?
ASIDE: It seems like just a few hours ago [It was just a few hours ago. -editor] that I was chalking up a privacy win against government snooping on smartphones, and now here I am warning you and your beloved not to act like teenagers in a parking lot.
“Car companies have so many more data-collecting opportunities than other products and apps we use,” Mozilla warns, “and can gather even more information about you from third party sources like Sirius XM or Google Maps. It’s a mess.”
Worse, more than half the companies surveyed “also say they can share your information with the government or law enforcement in response to a ‘request.'”
Not a subpoena. Not a court order. Just a request.
“Car brands,” the report concludes, “often do whatever they can legally get away with to your personal data.” For what it’s worth, not one of the 25 rated manufacturers got a passing grade, and only Tesla failed in all five graded areas. However much you might respect what Elon Musk has done with Twitter (now called X), Mozilla says Tesla fails its customers on data use, data control, security, and AI, and has a lousy track record, too.
While I’m less familiar with Google’s Android operating system, I’m savvy enough to know that its main purpose is to hoover up data and send it back to the Mothership to plump up Google’s ad revenues. So every time you plug your Android phone into the car dash for that awesome (and it is awesome) Android Auto infotainment system, it’s almost certainly sharing even more information with whoever makes your car.
But even all that isn’t enough for one major automaker. GM is ditching support for Apple’s iPhone-based CarPlay app, which is much more privacy-focused than Android Auto. Instead, GM will develop its own infotainment system, starting with its electric vehicles, that will help the company “capture more data on how consumers drive and charge EVs,” along with anything else that you touch, click, say, or do in or with your car. Since GM is developing the new OS in conjunction with Google, there doesn’t seem to be any practical limit on what GM might collect from its customers.
It isn’t just about the data, either. “GM is essentially dropping CarPlay because it wants to find new ways to charge customers a recurring subscription,” according to tech writer Chris Miller.
I don’t know if there’s a way to ditch the spyware and get some of our privacy back, but I do know this much: I’m ditching streaming music in my Jeep and going back to my old-school iPod — the one with the clickwheel and no internet connection.
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