In today’s world we are surrounded by a lot of devices which record and use our data. Usually when we think of data collection and recording we think of phones, home stations, tablets and others, but not cars. A large part of our personal data is being collected by our cars and can be used by police and criminals alike. Your car, depending on how new it is and the capabilities it has, could collect all sorts of data without your knowledge, including location data, at what point the doors were opened and your voice.
As an example I can bring up Joshua Wessel, who was charged with a murder based on the fact that the victims truck had a recording of Joshua’s voice at the time of the killing. A company called Berla Corp extracts data from vehicles on behalf of police. Berla’s software can identify unique ID’s of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices that were connected to the cars infotainment systems as well as text messages, call logs and contacts. And Berl’s software doesn’t stop there, it can look at the logs which were kept by the car’s internal computer, revealing location of some phone calls thanks to it’s built-in GPS or when specific doors were opened.
Car companies collect information on you whether it’s how far you drive, where you drive haw efficient your car is or what you listen to on the way to work. All of that data is valuable to understand who you are as a customer. Collection of data using your car started from a company called OnStar which was firstly introduced to make driving safer, you could not only call an ambulance in case of a crash, you could also use hands-free calling, turn-by-turn navigation and other emergency services. But later on this system evolved to track diagnostic, vehicle location and how often you use your vehicle and all this was collected in real time. On the website of OnStar they clearly mention that all the data collected could be used in marketing purposes, basically doing the same thing as Google. They mention that all of this information is presented to the driver, when buying an OnStar subscription, if the driver does not agree with the rules, his/her car will not be tracked, but most of the people don’t expect a car to collect their data so they don’t really read into the rules.
OnStar was one of the first to co;;etc personal data, but definitely not the last, nowadays all car companies have their own way of collecting personal data from drivers. “Connected vehicle” is a term describing a car which is connected to the internet, already 98% of new cars sold in the US and Europe are connected to the internet. All the collected data can be used to improve transportation, reduce emotions and traffic accidents and detecting crashes. One of the most valuable devices in a car is a E.D.R (event data recorder), it functions like a black box on a plane but for your car. E.D.R is triggered by accidents, sudden change in wheel speed or engine faults. Once it’s triggered, it records a wide range of elements that could be useful for crash investigators. Even though an E.D.R is located inside the car and store the data within the car, services like OnStar transmit data to off-site locations.
Most of the car companies don’t know how to consume the stream of data coming from their vehicles. A company called Otonomo takes all the raw data from your car, analyses it and sells it to third-party companies and splits profits with car manufacturers.
In my opinion it’s okay for navigation companies like Waze or insurance companies use that data to improve their services, but one of the biggest
This is not surprising in our time, almost everything we use collects data about us and uses it for its own purposes.
This will be our future. More and more data collected without our knowledge.