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US senators claim car makers sold driver data for pennies (www.theregister.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm hoping Lina Khan keeps up her good work (and that Harris keeps Khan as the FTC head). | archive

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Edward Markey (D-MA) sent a letter [PDF] to the US regulator's boss Lina Khan on Friday after the pair conducted an investigation into General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai.

Honda buried the disclosures about its business relationship with Verisk, which did not appear on the first page, and were not likely to be seen by many consumers.

GM and Hyundai allegedly neglected to mention selling data to Verisk at all.

If GM car owners wanted notifications about things like attempted break-ins and vehicle component health, they needed to sign up for the manufacturer's Smart Driver program, and doing so would quietly opt them into allowing their info to be sold on.

"The lengthy disclosures presented by GM before the opt-in did not disclose to consumers that as part of enrolling in Smart Driver, their driving data would be shared with data brokers and resold to insurance companies," the senators alleged, adding GM "disclosed customer location data to two other companies, which it refused to name."

Hyundai apparently enrolled its drivers into a similar Drive Score program without even asking, if they enabled the internet connection on the vehicle.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My latest concern these car stories have brought on, is that Ring, Nest, Eufy, other smart home camera systems, are selling data.

No evidence to it atm, but Ring used to provide access to police; not a huge leap to selling collected data to data brokers and insurance companies.

Currently, insurance companies are deploying drones to check out properties, and terminate and/or non-renew home owners insurance based on the footage. It's not a huge leap for smart camera providers to provide snapshots for this same purpose. It would be a huge betrayal of trust, and tank the brand, especially since many people set cameras up inside their home, but extracting pennies now, in exchange for losing several dollars per month subscription fees and hardware purchases, sounds just like something a lot of these companies would do.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I knew about the police getting access, but I missed that home insurance companies were checking properties with drones. I guess I don't mind them spending their own money to send their own drones to verify properties they insure, but I agree that using MY camera that I bought to get info or sell MY data is at least unethical and ought to be illegal. It should be required that they get my explicit consent to that sort of thing for each instance of data collection or sale.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If you search for "home owner insurance non-renewal drone", you should find tons of stories about it.

They may be hiring third parties, or doing it themselves, but regardless, it is happening.

Once again, to clarify, the smart camera thing has just been sitting in the back of my mind, not an accusation, just a concern as a possibility. Would probably be a fun investigation for an investigative journalist. Or just someone scouring those fun terms of service policies for language that might indicate such things.

Edit: Would actually be fun to get all of those companies to publicly state on the record that they do not, and will not ever do such a thing, your data is private, and will not be shared with anyone other than law enforcement, and/or without a warrant (or other legal court order).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If the drones are flying over private property without explicit authorization, the FAA may be a good place to start.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I was under the impression that airspace is not part of land property, so flying drones above private property in most instances is not illegal. Could totally be wrong here

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

In the US, property owners do indeed have some degree of rights over low-altitude airspace. The FAA states that one should have permission before intentionally flying over private property. In addition, a large number of states and municipalities have drone-specific surveillance, harassment, and privacy laws, so, it's a fair change that those may apply. Any commercial drone operator that violates local laws in course of their flight is likely to run into trouble with the FAA too.