Vehicle data collection - Wired artice.

Worth a read:  https://www.wired.com/story/car-data-privacy-toyota-honda-ford/

"Cars can track where you’re traveling to and from, record every press on the accelerator as well as your seatbelt settings, and gather biometric information about you. Some of this data is sold by the murky data-broker industry."  Makes me wonder if insurance companies are buying data on their drivers.

tl;dr privacy (or lack of) highlights -

• all manufacturers are likely to collect personal information that can be classed as an identifier. These include your name, address, driving license number, phone number, email, and other information.
• Toyota can also collect your “driving behavior.” This includes information such as your “acceleration and speed, steering, and braking functionality, and travel direction.”
• (Honda)  Driver behavior information can include pedal position, engine speed, and steering angle, among other things.
• There’s also “on-board data,” which is information that is generated by your car but “generally” not sent to Honda. This is information that’s stored in your car and could be accessed by someone plugging in external data extraction tools, such as a technician. Honda’s documentation says this could include information about how your car is used, driver behavior information, or contacts and messages sent using the systems.
• Chevrolet’s documents say it can collect information about your vehicle, such as its battery, ignition, and window data, gear status, and diagnostic information. It can also collect, among other things, your location, route history, your speed, and “braking and swerving/cornering events.”
• Stellantis can collect your name, address, phone number, email, Social Security number, and driving license number. The driving data the company collects, according to its documents, includes the dates and times you use it, your speed, acceleration and braking data, details of the trip (including location, weather, route taken), and, among other things, cruise control data.

Way back in 1999 when I worked for Sun Microsystems, our CEO Scott McNealy raised a stink when he said:  "You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it", and I think we've about reached that point.  What amazes me is how few people care.

FWIW, Tesla cars collect all of that and more--and they send it back to Corporate way more often.

And this is why I never want a newer car...

Your car is just confirming what your cell phone already knows. 

In reply to John Welsh :

And television, and "smart" home devices, and computers.

And your cat if he has a chip. 
 

/s

Read an article today on states implementing revenue generation through miles driven vs. gasoline taxes.  This will be through a state GPS device on your car.

Oh, and we also noticed that you were doing 74 in a 65.  That's some extra revenue.  Thanks!

And when you drive old cars this isn't an issue.

parker said:

Read an article today on states implementing revenue generation through miles driven vs. gasoline taxes.  This will be through a state GPS device on your car.

 

Oh, and we also noticed that you were doing 74 in a 65.  That's some extra revenue.  Thanks!

Link? I've only heard/read about this in regards to EV's since they aren't buying fuel which has a tax specifically for the roads. 

Obd 3 was supposed to transmit car data to road side stations for the states.  Talk of it went away not long after someone sued a rental company for issuing him a extra charge for speeding detected by their data monitoring.  Now people voluntary send driving data to their insurance companies for promise of lower rates.  There is not a lot the car can tell that your phone is not all ready recording, but I recently heard that Apple is trying to get access to all the cars data when the phone is paired so their must be some value in the data.

parker said:

Read an article today on states implementing revenue generation through miles driven vs. gasoline taxes.  This will be through a state GPS device on your car.

Oh, and we also noticed that you were doing 74 in a 65.  That's some extra revenue.  Thanks!

I'm pretty doubtful about the miles-driven-GPS-device thing.  That seems to me to be very difficult to make tamper-proof in an aftermarket/retrofit mode, and once you start charging people money with it there's a lot of incentive to mess with it.  Practically speaking it would need to be integrated into the ECU by the manufacturer, which means a mandatory new standard, which means it's 10+ years away since AFAIK they don't have anything like that in works yet.  I think it's more likely they'll just add taxes on commercial EV charging stations and perhaps on your home electric bill.  It's way easier to implement.

Either that or they'll just bump the registration fee up by $150/year on every car.  That's easier than any of the above.

z31maniac said:

parker said:

Read an article today on states implementing revenue generation through miles driven vs. gasoline taxes.  This will be through a state GPS device on your car.

 

Oh, and we also noticed that you were doing 74 in a 65.  That's some extra revenue.  Thanks!

Link? I've only heard/read about this in regards to EV's since they aren't buying fuel which has a tax specifically for the roads. 

AP article.  https://apnews.com/article/gas-tax-highway-maintenance-mileage-user-fees-15abaae7e6097946f900e87be95214e1

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

parker said:

Read an article today on states implementing revenue generation through miles driven vs. gasoline taxes.  This will be through a state GPS device on your car.

Oh, and we also noticed that you were doing 74 in a 65.  That's some extra revenue.  Thanks!

I'm pretty doubtful about the miles-driven-GPS-device thing.  That seems to me to be very difficult to make tamper-proof in an aftermarket/retrofit mode, and once you start charging people money with it there's a lot of incentive to mess with it.  Practically speaking it would need to be integrated into the ECU by the manufacturer, which means a mandatory new standard, which means it's 10+ years away since AFAIK they don't have anything like that in works yet.  I think it's more likely they'll just add taxes on commercial EV charging stations and perhaps on your home electric bill.  It's way easier to implement.

Either that or they'll just bump the registration fee up by $150/year on every car.  That's easier than any of the above.

 

I agree with you.  Some states apparently do not.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

My state proposed a GPS device and immediately ran into privacy issues........the threats of lawsuits started the instant it was proposed.

John Welsh said:

Your car is just confirming what your cell phone already knows. 

Yeah, I hate that too. Seems the only solution would to become a hermit, living under a rock. Even the Amish ( 'least the ones around here anyway) have smartphones.

I drive older vehicles for the most part. They aren't smart enough to communicate with the world. I don't see that changing any time soon. 

As for the state wanting to put a GPS tracker on my car, I will not comply. That would never make it past the Supreme Court so it won't be an issue. The insurance companies can kiss off as well. It's worth the rate difference to tell them to FO. Not to mention it wouldn't save me anything anyway. I have a love affair with the throttle pedal. 

For about $20 you can buy a Faraday bag for your phone that will take it off the grid. Turn it off and stick it in the bag. While you are at it, stick your key fob and cards in there too. Then you can do all the nefarious things you want. 

Colorado Department of Transport was playing with a road useage tax a few years back. I'll have to follow up and see what happened. They were looking at three different ways to track useage - GPS monitors, non-GPS monitors and annual odometer checks.
https://www.codot.gov/programs/ruc/documents/rucpp-fact-sheet

Mercedes has been doing investigations on crashed cars for decades.
https://www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/26/26ESV-000178.pdf

Data collection is an obvious part of this - the car doesn't know you're going to have an accident very long before you have it, so of course it's going to be recording all the time. Also, with stability/traction control systems being such a major safety factor in modern cars, the manufacturer definitely wants to know how/if that went wrong. This black box recording covers a lot of the things that are outlined in the article. Also, every time you ask your navigation system to outline a trip and it tells you what your last destinations were to be helpful - where you do think that came from? My 20 year old BMW does that.

Toyman! said:

As for the state wanting to put a GPS tracker on my car, I will not comply. That would never make it past the Supreme Court so it won't be an issue. The insurance companies can kiss off as well. It's worth the rate difference to tell them to FO.

When you buy groceries, do you use your "club card" or do you pay extra not to have your purchase tied to your profile?

Yes yes, we get it, the idea of privacy is a joke. 

What should happen, in any just society, is that those in charge have all their private things made public before pushing it on the citizenry. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred, and those in charge are the only ones with any privacy. 

GM has all the data on how, when and where I drive my truck already. I haven't subscribed to the service, but they sent me reports for the first three months of ownership. The emails even offered to share the data with insurance companies if I wished. No thanks. I still get a monthly email telling me my tire pressures though.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I don't have any club cards. When the FLAPS asks for a phone number for warranty purposes, I tell them to use their own and that I'll be happy to keep up with the receipt. While I almost always use credit cards for business and online purchases, I do 90% of my in-person shopping in cash. I generally don't participate in anything that requires giving out locations, phone numbers, or addresses. I have location services on my phone turned off and only allow it for limited apps. Case in point, my youngest wanted to order subs last night. I wanted to look at Subway's menu to pick out a sub. I couldn't access it without allowing it to access my phone's location. Since that was the case, we ordered subs from Jimmy John's. 

Understanding that this is mostly a losing battle I'm still going to make life as difficult as possible for the data miners.

As a benefit of this, I seldom get sales calls from anyone nor do I get piles of junk mail to sort through and dispose of. That's worth every penny I don't save. 

So as someone who has to deal with privacy issues related to software:

There is a huuuuuuuuuuge difference between voluntarily allowing the tracking and the state mandating it. When you click and or mark yes on agreeing to those terms & conditions (the ones you didn't read) that's still considered voluntary.

A state mandating this is entirely a different thing. I work for a large state agency and we have to make sure none of the software is tracking anyone (namely students). If a state does this it will likely get struck down in the courts.

It's one thing to be gathering data as part of an investigation it's entirely another to be tracking in real time. This would be no different than the IRS tracking your paycheck and spending in real time. The information is there but they can't legally have it without requesting it.

In reply to Toyman! :

After negotiating contracts with software/tech companies for the last several years I have come to the conclusion that the industry is evil..............or at the very least highly predatory. 

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

parker said:

Read an article today on states implementing revenue generation through miles driven vs. gasoline taxes.  This will be through a state GPS device on your car.

Oh, and we also noticed that you were doing 74 in a 65.  That's some extra revenue.  Thanks!

I'm pretty doubtful about the miles-driven-GPS-device thing.  That seems to me to be very difficult to make tamper-proof in an aftermarket/retrofit mode, and once you start charging people money with it there's a lot of incentive to mess with it.  Practically speaking it would need to be integrated into the ECU by the manufacturer, which means a mandatory new standard, which means it's 10+ years away since AFAIK they don't have anything like that in works yet.  I think it's more likely they'll just add taxes on commercial EV charging stations and perhaps on your home electric bill.  It's way easier to implement.

Either that or they'll just bump the registration fee up by $150/year on every car.  That's easier than any of the above.

 

Maybe checking mileage yearly when you renew your tag/registration, you pay the additional tax then? 

No GPS, no tracking other than mileage. 

Subaru already has a separate "computer" the STARLINK that reports back mileage, vehicle health, etc, and sends you a monthly email about if tire pressure is low, upcoming services and so on. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I don't have any club cards. When the FLAPS asks for a phone number for warranty purposes, I tell them to use their own and that I'll be happy to keep up with the receipt. While I almost always use credit cards for business and online purchases, I do 90% of my in-person shopping in cash. I generally don't participate in anything that requires giving out locations, phone numbers, or addresses. I have location services on my phone turned off and only allow it for limited apps. Case in point, my youngest wanted to order subs last night. I wanted to look at Subway's menu to pick out a sub. I couldn't access it without allowing it to access my phone's location. Since that was the case, we ordered subs from Jimmy John's. 

Understanding that this is mostly a losing battle I'm still going to make life as difficult as possible for the data miners.

As a benefit of this, I seldom get sales calls from anyone nor do I get piles of junk mail to sort through and dispose of. That's worth every penny I don't save. 

 

And the grocery store? I can't think of the last time I saw a grocery store around here that didn't have some sort of membership program other than maybe Walmart.

One local chain decided to do away with "club" cards and just charge everyone the same price whether they wanted to be datamined or not. They bailed on that in less than a year and went back to charging extra to people who didn't want to share their info. Apparently consumers love the idea of "saving" money.

The reason Subway wanted to know your phone's location was to figure out where the closest Subway was quickly instead of having you select it. You're going to give them your address for delivery anyhow, it's not like you're really depriving them of information. Jimmy John's got just as much out of you.

I don't get sales calls or junk mail that's not tied to my actual house.

I also see the flip side - the amount of information we can pull from our customers is frightening. We used to have a marketing tool that would tie FB profiles to customers with everything that entailed (we never used that, FYI). I'm interested in general demographics - ND owners tend to be older than NA owners, but you'd be amazed at just how wide the spread is - but not interested in ultra-targeted info. It's much easier to deal with aggregated generalities.