MCViewPoint

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2018/01/22/profits-loss-privacy/

Who owns the data culled by your car? And – more to the point – who is profiting from it?

And why aren’t they cutting us a check, at least?

All new cars – and most cars built over the past decade or so – have data recorders and this data is not only stored but can be – in newer cars – transmitted back to the manufacturer (e.g., General Motors) without the knowledge of the car’s owner.

That is, you.

Having John Hancocked the paperwork, “their” car becomes a kind of four-wheeled Chatty Cathy, constantly “sharing” the data it collects. In the newest cars, this could and likely does include whatever is said in the car (there are microphones in almost all new cars, part of the hands-free cell phone/voice recognition system) as well as whatever is texted (most new cars pipe your phone’s data through the car’s system, which means the car has access to the data and thus, so does GM or Honda or whomever)…

So, what do they do with this data?

Ask Lisa Joy Rosner. She is the chief marketing officer for a data mining company called Otonomo – which “partners” with the car manufacturers to make money off all that data, by selling it to interested parties…

Leaving aside the nettlesome – the disturbing – privacy issues, there is the issue of these data mining operations not paying you – the owner of the mine – a cent for the data they mine and profit from.

Such a deal!…

Be seeing you

I am not a number. I am a free man!-Number 6