Now that automobile manufacturers are almost more about software than hardware, your car company may know more about you than your spouse based on all the sensors in your car. The incentive to collect driver and passenger data is great. Every piece of data is used to increase revenue, especially if sold onward to third-parties.
Dunn may consider his everyday driving habits mundane, but auto and privacy experts suspect that big automakers like Honda see them as anything but. By monitoring his everyday movements, an automaker can vacuum up a massive amount of personal information about someone like Dunn, everything from how fast he drives and how hard he brakes to how much fuel his car uses and the entertainment he prefers. The company can determine where he shops, the weather on his street, how often he wears his seat belt, what he was doing moments before a wreck — even where he likes to eat and how much he weighs.
Though drivers may not realize it, tens of millions of American cars are being monitored like Dunn's, experts say, and the number increases with nearly every new vehicle that is leased or sold.
The result is that carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners' knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:30PM (4 children)
OnStar is one good reason not to buy a GM car.
There's many others, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:58PM (3 children)
With the upcoming spy^H^H^Hassistance box mandate in Europe, expect all cars to be fitted with them soon.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @05:46PM (2 children)
Europe isn't going to mandate OnStar; I don't believe that for a second. OnStar is a product of American carmaker GM, though they've sold it to some others (I think one of the Japanese makes maybe). If Europe mandates anything, it'll be something created by a EU company like Bosch, not something from GM.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:18PM
Instead they're mandating eCall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:05AM
Too bad it can't be designed and built by Lucas.