https://www.carscoops.com/2024/09/la...a-to-insurers/

All right, who here takes credit for that? Good job.

Not holding my breath, but it has to start somewhere.

 

So it basically reports back to the manufacturer who passes on the data and then the insurance companies can tell if you are driving like an idiot, before they give you a quote.

Actually doesn't sound too bad an idea, very much like the "black box" here in the U.K. Although it's voluntary so you know it's there.

 

Cars have black boxes here in the US, too. I'm pretty sure it is now commonplace worldwide.

 

All car manufacturers will be facing similar lawsuits. Telematics and the data they generate are the new GOLD and OEM are getting serious revenues for selling this data. GM is facing a hell of a lawsuit currently in Texas. This selling of your information has to stop one way or another regardless of how good or bad of a driver you are. How hard you brake or accelerate or how often you go over the speed limit is nobody's business, period. OEM's will tell you they are not sharing your information, but we all know this is not true. Some claim you can opt out of a lot of these privacy related options, but then they will turn around and say this choice limits your use of certain features in their apps. Again, this is cat and mouse games. Life was so much simpler and worry free in the old analog age....

 

Should have kept my old 2005 Defender, no black boxes or internet connectivity in that.

Not that l really care if "they" know where l've been driving or how fast. l've no secrets.

 

comparing this to a "black box" seems a bit loose IMO. in the situation of an airline pilot, that person is hired to fly a plane they don't own, with customers that have paid the airline for the service. if anything goes wrong, everyone needs to know what happened. I don't think the transactions and corresponding liability have comparison to a person that owns a car outright & is driving it for personal use? It's entirely their own exclusive property, and with that, don't property rights follow?? I would grant that any car company can legitimately capture driving dynamics on a car they make, if they use that feedback to build safer cars. I don't think that would get any lawsuit. Because you bought the car, you likely want the company to continue; it seems reasonable you share anonymous driving dynamics data with them. What does not intuitively follow would be your data being shared with disinterested third parties for cross marketing & advertising opportunities. It seems many car companies may have been doing it? To be fair, isn't the Amazon/Alexa device also in trouble with some of that stuff? iPhones too capture lots of data. It's a difficult legal line to draw as to who owns what data, and what may approximate "wire tapping" in today's economy of not so much voice as "bits;" so the courts will have to sort it all out. May take years and maybe we'll get new laws from Congress. But however it unfolds, a personal use car is not a Boeing 747 commercially owned & operated airplane. That type of thinking would bring tracking devices to everything you buy. If a piece of personally owned property is allowed to freely capture all of your personal information it can gather and then sell it to third parties, why limit that to just cars? Would a coffee maker record what brands of coffee you use most frequently in the machine? Or a refrigerator recognize how much ice cream you put in there every month? What if your air freshener recorded how often it filtered cigarette smoke from the room? Wouldn't an insurance company want to know if you (as an insured) have a cigarette daily, weekly, or not at all? I have to think some of this stuff is going to hit property rights at some point.

 

Information is like the **** in the pool, once it gets somewhere, it can only spread, not localize.

Once agency X gets it, it becomes ripe for taking by anyone capable and willing (see "Choice Healthcare breach"). From that point on, it's a matter of collecting the breadcrumbs about you to do whatever "they" want to do with your life - and "they" are not the people in white collars behind office desk you think will be looking at it, but... let your imagination run wild, your worst nightmare is probably a benign version of what will actually happen.

Keep in mind that as a Defender owner, you and your family are an HVT and get special attention and preferential treatment compared to an average person.

 

You definitely have a point.
l never thought of it that way.

ls it possible to turn off data collection on the vehicle?

 

^ Exactly what I meant.

 

Im not disagreeing with the sentiment of what you’re saying, but the odds of your full name, address, DoB, and SSN not already being available on the dark web are close to 0. We have only the illusion of privacy left because no one (very few) are willing to give up the grid.