The FUD spouted on here by the scummy adtech industry about legislation to protect YOUR privacy is mind boggling. These are the people doing the digital equivalent of sniffing your underwear to work out what you had for breakfast.
(And before somebody shouts FUD about the UK/EU vehicle eCall 112 system, that certainly doesn't track you or seek to invade your privacy on any level!)
Maybe if you buy the car with cash, but if you finance it you are leasing from a company that has definetly accepted all the terms and conditions to capture and sell all the telemetry to various parties
>without an explicit opt-in
check out at a modern volvo/audi/whatever, they are making it so difficult to say no every single time the screen is powered on
The data is anonymized and you can opt out, but many people probably don't know it's collected in the first place.
Automotive EE here... You are completely wrong and your rationale is based on misunderstandings of the laws.
I have absolutely no idea how the laws work either, we’re the same. But, I promise you every single car in the EU with GPS and cell is reporting telemetry. Every and all.
How do you know?
BTW, the checking all the opt-ins is usually the first thing the sales person does when selling a new car.
But maybe it IS true. I know it's legally mandated.
So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach?
Really?
It's genuinely amazing how many Americans on here (a tech news site!) are unaware of data privacy law and expectations outside their homeland.
I would like to see some form of IP/property rights applied to user data, with treble damages for willful infringement.
The entire concept of collecting user data and calling it “telemetry” needs to be abandoned — including (especially) in the software industry. Collecting any user data ought to be something that makes corporate lawyers nervous.
Unfortunately, I expect that to happen roughly after hell freezes over.
[1] I couldn’t confirm that any car currently actually does this. Hypothetically, iPhone tethering is possible over both USB and Bluetooth if personal hotspot is enabled.
