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by vardump 1413 days ago
I think any car company is toast, if it sells users' private data. Including Tesla. I really doubt any data is being sold.

Most companies do actually collect data for a very simple reason: they want to genuinely improve their products and services. (Although some companies, like Google, Samsung and Facebook collect it also to help other companies sell more crap to you.)

Please provide details if you have any evidence that Tesla (or any other automotive company) is selling users' data.

7 comments

>I think any car company is toast, if it sells users' private data. Including Tesla. I really doubt any data is being sold.

Any car company whose parent owner has multi-billion dollar contracts with the US government is toast if it doesn't sell its data, at least to the NSA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveilla...

What about policy(ies) relating to providing data to law enforcement, and whether a warrant is required?

I know this is moving the goalposts from selling data - but I don't think folks concerned with data privacy are strictly and exclusively concerned about the sale of such data.

Yeah, that is a huge problem in authoritarian jurisdictions OR if data is provided without warrant.
Warrants are easy to come by even in supposed democracies like the US or Germany. Alternatively, the US government has repeatedly shown it does not give a fuck about laws and simply compels providers to accept whatever they are doing (Room 614A), or outright hacks the company in question (e.g. Google got their datacenter fiber connections spliced).
Even if it's not sold, the car's behavior may expose some user data to external services - navigation systems enriching maps with local data (restaurants, gas stations, charger occupancy, parking spaces, hotels) may connect to services that allow an external entity to identify a car or the person driving it. I don't know Tesla's software enough to make any further observations, but the possibility exists.
Trend Micro: Honda to Start Selling Smart Car Data (Oct 2021) https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/21/j/honda-to-star...

I think the rubicon is crossed with connected car data.

My Toyota app apparently provides insurance quotes based on my driving behavior (until I saw it in the data privacy section and disabled it).

Was turned automatically on with the connected app (that I do find useful so I have it enabled).

I have to imagine that the data isn’t provided free of charge to insurers and includes my info, car info, and driving behavior.

For a brief time, Ford tried to rebrand as a quasi-electronics company in some circles. Ford has been on the record saying they would be in a position to create “customer experiences” and “ownership offers based on connected vehicle data.” It’s all a bit cryptic but you can look up the Team Upshift project.
Some state DMVs regularly sell citizens' data [1]. Not an automotive company but related.

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a32035408/dmv-selling-...