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Automakers Sold Driver Data for Pennies, Senators Say
- strict9 2y agohttps://archive.is/G6LP8 https://archive.is/G6LP8
- celeritascelery 2y agoI don’t know which is worse, that they sold my data or that it was worth so little.
- b112 2y ago50 or 100 million customers, a few pennies each, is a lot of pennies. It's why car interiors are so cheap, when alternatives aren't expensive.
- tiltowait 2y agoFrom the article, they’re making paltry sums at their scale. Honda raked in a whopping $6k per year, while Hyundai made out like a bandit at $160k/yr. Looking at their revenues, this is just silly money. Honda pulled in $100B in revenue in 2022; Hyundai, $85B. That they would even bother with this program given the potential backlash is bizarre.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoForget the backlash. I'm pretty sure that Honda spent more than $6k per year for the cost of the people to run this, so they lost money on the operation before any reputation hit is accounted for.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- whamlastxmas 2y agoMy assumption is they’re sharing this data for a third party to provide services, for example consulting on how Honda can better market their existing customers
- a3n 2y agoProof of concept. They're probably planning and designing something much more lucrative. Why else bother with silly money?
- garrickvanburen 2y agoI agree. The prices don’t seem to reflect how valuable we’re told this data is
- tomrod 2y agoPennies, you say? That seems like a useful data asset at a deanonymized level, maybe rolled up to census tract or block groups, and with POI split out so you can investigate all sorts of things. I don't really care where Ms. Wilkins next door takes her cats during the day, but if I were looking to buy a small business I might like to know which grooming service is drawing people from further away.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoThe problem is location data is highly identifying (provides people’s address and work location amount others). Maybe if it was aggregated and restricted to average number of cars at X public locations at any given time. But it sounds like the individual data is being sold here.
- trte9343r4 2y agoNot just automakers. Several dealership install GPS trackers under dashboard to track inventory, and can not be bothered to remove it after sale. If your battery has parasitic current drain, and discharges when car sits idle for weeks, this is the most likely cause. You should not have any expectations of privacy today.
- burnt_toast 2y agoI know every dealer is different but I've worked at several and never heard of gps trackers for inventory purposes. Dealers don't usually kept track of where the cars are very well. On the flip side smaller questionable used car dealers have definitely installed trackers to help with repoing a car in the event the buyer stops paying, or even worse lock down the car so it won't start.
- JohnFen 2y ago> and can not be bothered to remove it after sale That sounds like they gave me a free GPS unit that I could repurpose.
- rasz 2y agoThose are for high risk Buy Here, Pay Here leases. Dealer owns the car.
- cptcobalt 2y ago> your car’s movements and exact location are being collected and shared anonymously with a data broker > said that the company had gotten the precise location of about 10 million G.M. cars up to every one to three seconds, but that the data did not include identifying details about the driver. The word "Anonymously" means exactly nothing here. If one's exact location and movements are collected, wouldn't that include a lot of time and datapoints where the car is spending time at work and home locations? Seems incredibly trivial at that point to deanonymize usage.
- TheBozzCL 2y agoA long time ago, I read an article about a journalist that did just that: bought a pack of “anonymized” location data set, then promptly tracked and interviewed one of the people in said data set. It kills me that I can’t remember where the article was exactly, because it’s one of mu favorite examples of why fighting indiscriminate tracking is important. I remember it being from a Scandinavian newspaper, maybe Dannish?
- Zelphyr 2y agoIt may be the same article, I'm not sure, but I remember reading something similar where researchers also showed that the more anonymized the data, the less useful (and thus valuable) it becomes. Maybe there's a balance to be found but, ultimately, it seems like "anonymized" is a pipe dream.
- dotandgtfo 2y agoCould it be this Norwegian one from NRK? https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-me-so-i-tracked-down-the-surveillants/ https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-me-so-i... The original in Norwegian https://www.nrk.no/norge/xl/avslort-av-mobilen-1.14911685 https://www.nrk.no/norge/xl/avslort-av-mobilen-1.14911685 has some nice visualizations.
- TheBozzCL 2y agoI think this could be it, thanks!
- paxys 2y agoHmm, I wonder who has the authority to pass laws to prevent this.
- solardev 2y agoProbably the same people who would instead buy it and add it to their own records. Companies and governments looooove your data.
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoPro move: buy this data and make a torrent of it. Then we can all analyze what they are collecting and can improve the visibility this issue gets. We really need better privacy laws in the US but laws can't move as fast as the tech sector does. What company do I need to goto to buy this data?
- j-bos 2y agoI've been thinking something similar, howuch would it cost for individuals to have what used to be high tech always on spy gadgetry. Shouldn't be prohibitively expensive, but what would be the consequences of everyone having instant dossiers on everyone else?
- mplewis 2y agoI appreciate where you’re coming from, but making all of this data public would immediately and directly endanger many people, e.g. women trying to stay hidden from abusive ex-partners.
- pyrale 2y agoThere's actual risk that this "pro move" harms or kills people. fucking around and finding out is much less commendable when you fuck around with other people's lives and let them find out.
- Teever 2y agoAny action has consequences. Both positive and negative, desirable and undesirable. It's about the balance between those things. It's totally possible that this action could result in someone uncovering a serial killer or organized crime ring. This could save lives. Why are you opposed to an action that could save lives and bring about desperately needed changes in privacy laws?
- pyrale 2y agoI don't believe it's your choice to make if you're not the one suffering the consequences. Or, as Alan Perlis puts it: "Don't have good ideas it you're not willing to be responsible for them".
- Zelphyr 2y agoHere's what I would like to see: A law that says that if any company sells any data associated with me then they must share 50% of the sale of that data with me in cash. Maybe it's overly simplistic and definitely unrealistic but, there it is.
- aaomidi 2y agoThen they’ll double the price and you’ll get 2 bucks instead of 1. The money maker here is the scale of which it happens at.
- JohnFen 2y agoI would be very opposed to that because it would effectively cement the idea that collecting and selling this data is acceptable and make fighting it even more difficult. I don't want to be paid for the collection and use of my personal data, I want for the collection and use to not happen without my informed consent.
- Zelphyr 2y agoI don't disagree and I would be fine with the law requiring companies to gain your explicit consent to the collection of data. If I give consent then they must pay me 50% of the gross price of the data. Processing fees and overhead comes out of their share, not mine. And it must be in cash only. No in-kind trades. I want them to have to really want it badly if they want to profit on my information.
- EasyMark 2y agohow about we just outlaw this tracking information period. Companies can advertise to you based on searches and browser location only? and required by law to not track individuals with $1 billion dollar fines and 5 years imprisonment if caught doing otherwise?
- rqtwteye 2y agoThe whole day broker industry needs to be made illegal. We should make it extremely tedious for companies to share data. Instead of giving broad permission on page 3876 of the TOS it should be required to get customer approval for every share and we should be able to know with whom our data is shared. “Anonymization” doesn’t work either. It’s way too easy to deanonymize most data.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ZoomerCretin 2y agoIt was sold to the insurance industry so they could more accurately gauge the risk they face. It came to light because some particularly dangerous drivers found their insurance premiums rise to $500+/month. The counter-example is the world where safe drivers much more heavily subsidize extremely bad drivers. If I have no accidents on my record in 10 years, and have every observable behavior that indicates low risk, why should I pay substantial amounts of money every year because the government does not want insurers to have the data to tell I'm not a high-risk driver?
- Teever 2y agoI want to know who did this. It wasn't GM that did this. GM is an abstract entity composed of people. Who specifically did this? We need to name and shame them. This is only correct course of action in these situations. So who specifically did this?
- blendo 2y agoCheck your owners manual to see if this type of data collection can be disabled. For our 2021 Mazda, it required a phone call to Mazda. For real security, I’d like to pull the modem fuse, but i know neither which fuse to pull, nor if other systems might stop working.
- 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt 2y agoIf you pull the fuse for this in my Chevrolet, it disables the "Cybersecurity system" and the car dashboard will not function. You must call OnStar and request it to be disabled on the vehicle.