Ford Really Wants Your Driving Data

[JohnFoxeSheets]

I am no Ford apologist, but on this topic I think that as of now, at least as pertains to LexisNexis and insurance companies, Ford has been doing the right thing. As @methorian and I have both confirmed, our lengthy LexisNexis reports do not contain any driving data. Ford has clearly stated they do not share driving data without vehicle owner permission. (They do share with certain insurance companies, but only if the owner requests it.) Could this change in the future? Of course.

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[bbulkow]

Multiple threads on this. Features that require data be sent back to Ford and then to your phone, and involve 3rd party service providers, are shared. Totally logical. No personal data is sold.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this thread.

The MachE privacy document specifies several categories of data. Ford specifically states that data is not "all or nothing", as your comment implies.

First, Driving Data is specifically called out as separate, and, since it is linked to driving behavior, far scarier than all other data. It is not immediately intuitive that Driving Data (which is well defined in the document) should be linked to the Charging feature. The back end system that saves a few profiles for when you'd like to charge and to what level has nothing obvious to do with Driving. There is a feature to "save where you are now as a location", which by my reading isn't driving Data although Driving Data can be inferred, it would be super trivial to unlink the Location feature from Charging. It would also be very simple to have the app specify a location by zip code, address, or location of the phone, and have the car know its location. I have asked many times for a charge limit independent of location - it's actually terrible design to have an engineering-driven feature (limit charging to 90% is in the manual for my model and year) depend on location. Just have a charge limit independent of location.

Second, the document Ford has you sign says that Driving Data will be shared with unnamed Partners. It also states that the agreement can be changed at any time. This agreement trumps what anyone (including FoMoCo) states on a random forum somewhere. I can't take you to court when it turns out that Ford has been giving the data to a "partner", and that partner is Lexis/Nexis, and they have been selling it to an insurance company, and now I am forever practically uninsurable.

While I think Ford's heart is in the right place, they should:
1) decouple the Charge limiting feature feature from the willingness to provide Driving Data, and
2) they should remove the "partners" language from the privacy and data agreement.

In my opinion.

I have not decided, yet, to disable driving Data collection. I am unsure how, practically, I will follow the manual's policy of limiting to 90% without that feature. I bought a "dumb charger" believing that I could sensibly limit and control from the car, which is simpler and less error prone. I did not have any reason to believe (even as a subject matter expert on data privacy) that I would need to agree with sharing all driving, speed, braking data with FoMoCo and its partners in order to limit my charging to 90%, and I don't have an easy plan B (limiting at the charger is impractical for me for several reasons).

In my professional experience, employees at a company often don't read the legal agreements. They rely on a statement from someone else in the company, who is relying on something else, often from a lawyer who didn't understand the nuances of the terms in the agreement and the data systems involved. Often, also, the internal communications regarding data privacy language and decisions need to be marked "attorney client priv" and be limited, often to people who have gone through specific privacy training, meaning that broad internal understanding from engineering to comms is problematic. The answer is simple: if someone inside a company is going to make a statement about the legal agreement, they should spend the 30 minutes to read the legal agreement. In this case, Ford's privacy agreement is a model of clarity, so the read is relatively painless. Reads like that prevent people internally and externally from making statements that are incorrect on their face, which I have professionally seen at numerous companies.

Finally, it's not "obvious" that data needs to be shared with service providers in order to have a phone-based feature. End to end encryption is in use at plenty of companies for this type of scenario. While E2E encryption still presents an attack surface by scraping the screen of a person's device, that surface area is HIGHLY minimal and is not considered sharing with a service provider. If I can send an end-to-end encrypted message from my phone to my mom's phone (eg WhatsApp), if an active war like the Ukraine can use Telegram safely, then I can send an end-to-end encrypted message from my phone to my car and vice versa. The technology exists and Ford could certainly implement a version of it, they are limited by will.

To sum up,

1) Not obvious *at all* that phone based features require sharing with service providers despite the statements of Ford,
2) Not obvious that the charging feature requires from an engineering perspective either location or driving data,
3) Not obvious that the "partners" in the legal agreement might not be data brokers with unknown limits, liability, and purpose.
4) Not clear how to apply the driving manual's charging instructions without the charge limit feature.

 

[Mach-Lee]

IDK, y’all better sell your Mach-E because there’s a greater than 0.1% chance Ford might possibly sell a few bytes of data to a 3rd party sometime in the next decade. Even though there’s zero evidence of that happening, you can’t be too safe. I mean, what if someone found out I drove my car a couple miles to the grocery store last Tuesday?

 

[DustyShades]

That is exactly correct. As you pointed out, every word counts. “Directly” means something. “Sell” (rather than make available or provide) means something. Finally, remaining silent, as Ford is on a number of possibilities, means something.

I can’t say for sure what Ford is doing or might do in the future, but what I can say is that based on their terms, there is a whole lot they CAN do.

PS, running a report on one company (Lexis) and turning up nothing, tells us only one thing: “At that moment, that specific company MAY not have your data”. But let’s not forget the rest of the world!

Sorry I don’t think you understood at all. You have no datapoints at all that ford is selling data. What you’re calling out doesn’t really tell us anything.

Also there’s quotes from other users where Ford said that they were not selling user data to third parties (I don’t think that this proves anything, just pointing out that your argument about ford saying nothing is also incorrect in addition to meaning nothing).

 

[rreddy3]

IDK, y’all better sell your Mach-E because there’s a greater than 0.1% chance Ford might possibly sell a few bytes of data to a 3rd party sometime in the next decade. Even though there’s zero evidence of that happening, you can’t be too safe. I mean, what if someone found out I drove my car a couple miles to the grocery store last Tuesday?

Great question. It depends on what you bought at the grocery store and whether the check out scanning device is connected to a deep state conspiracy with Ford and the government and the insurers we love to hate ….

 

[AKgrampy]

IDK, y’all better sell your Mach-E because there’s a greater than 0.1% chance Ford might possibly sell a few bytes of data to a 3rd party sometime in the next decade. Even though there’s zero evidence of that happening, you can’t be too safe. I mean, what if someone found out I drove my car a couple miles to the grocery store last Tuesday?

Exactly! And when you come right down to it if you are coming to live in a “conspiracy theory” world how do you know flipping the switch actually turns off the data sharing/collection? As far as I am concerned if you are a lousy driver then you should pay higher insurance. Then my insurance might come down ( doubtful.)

 

[rreddy3]

Exactly! And when you come right down to it if you are coming to live in a “conspiracy theory” world how do you know flipping the switch actually turns off the data sharing/collection? As far as I am concerned if you are a lousy driver then you should pay higher insurance. Then my insurance might come down ( doubtful.)

I concur.

 

[awp0]

I don't have an opinion on what Ford may or may not be doing with my data. But hopefully we can agree it's frustrating that Ford requires us to share things like seat belt and brake/accelerator usage data in order to use totally unrelated features of the app.

 

[Gungrave223]

I don't have an opinion on what Ford may or may not be doing with my data. But hopefully we can agree it's frustrating that Ford requires us to share things like seat belt and brake/accelerator usage data in order to use totally unrelated features of the app.

This was ultimately the point I was trying to make. I get that in the digital age we have to sacrifice a bit of privacy for convenience... But my not wanting to share my driving data with Ford (regardless as to whether they sell/share that data or not) doesn't mean I want to have to walk out to the car and disable location base charging if I want it to charge to 100% either.

The info card in the car for sharing driving data clearly states that it does not affect that app settings....which is clearly not the case.

While it is inconvenient, I personally value privacy over convivence in this case... so I PERSONALLY will be leaving the toggle off, cause going back to the original question... I don't think giving up the privacy around my driving data is worth being able to set departure time, see/set preferred charging, or being able to see my charging history from the app is worth it. ?

 

[MrLoganRoss]

Y

Sorry I don’t think you understood at all. You have no datapoints at all that ford is selling data. What you’re calling out doesn’t really tell us anything.

Also there’s quotes from other users where Ford said that they were not selling user data to third parties (I don’t think that this proves anything, just pointing out that your argument about ford saying nothing is also incorrect in addition to meaning nothing).

I recommend you read multiple times if that is what it takes. There are a few on this forum that continue to spew the idea that Ford has been 100% clear on what they can and can’t do with our data. As has been demonstrated multiple times, Ford’s policies and statements are inconsistent and incomplete (i.e., huge loop-holes).

I don’t recall saying I know what Ford is doing (none of us know). I have accused them of nothing other than lacking full/complete transparency. I also haven’t said those loopholes are intentional.

What I and others have been saying that the rights Ford has asked for from us allow them to do quite a bit. We haven’t said they are doing anything today. But - They could change their mind. New leadership can spin up new programs. That’s just the way it goes.

BTW, Simply searching a single company database for a report on you individually and not finding a report doesn’t mean nothing else is happening with your data (now or in the future). That is flawed logic.

 

[DustyShades]

Y
I recommend you read multiple times if that is what it takes. There are a few on this forum that continue to spew the idea that Ford has been 100% clear on what they can and can’t do with our data. As has been demonstrated multiple times, Ford’s policies and statements are inconsistent and incomplete (i.e., huge loop-holes).

I don’t recall saying I know what Ford is doing (none of us know). I have accused them of nothing other than lacking full/complete transparency. I also haven’t said those loopholes are intentional.

What I and others have been saying that the rights Ford has asked for from us allow them to do quite a bit. We haven’t said they are doing anything today. But - They could change their mind. New leadership can spin up new programs. That’s just the way it goes.

BTW, Simply searching a single company database for a report on you individually and not finding a report doesn’t mean nothing else is happening with your data (now or in the future). That is flawed logic.

Can you point to where I said that Ford isn’t selling data?

Also, I said in my comments that whatever ford has or hasn’t said is irrelevant to determining if they’re selling data.

I feel like maybe you’re having some trouble comprehending what I’m writing here.

 

[MrLoganRoss]

Funny. That’s what I said to you. Way to go on the originality front ?

 

[rreddy3]

I suspect Ford’s policies aren’t much different than any other mainstream vehicle manufacturer.

privacy and data harvesting are clearly hot button issues, and very personal.

Data is being collected, sliced, diced and sold every moment or every day. I was joking about the grocery store scanners a few hours ago. But..make no mistake, if you’re using an electronic checkout anywhere the data is being captured and used.

Be glad you can turn off the data share on the car if the data issue concerns you.

 

[P. T. Magoo]

I was joking about the grocery store scanners a few hours ago. But..

"Welcome, Valued Customer."

 

[bbulkow]

This is the only data point on the topic in the whole thread that actually addresses if Ford sells data directly to brokers / indirectly to insurance companies.

I don’t think one data point for an individual user conclusively lets us know that they don’t, but I will say that there’s one piece of evidence that they don’t and then just a bunch of additional non-conclusive conjecture both ways. Right now my view is that Ford most likely does not sell user data. I think anyone arguing differently needs to bring some facts.

I appreciate your focus on evidence.

Let's be slightly more precise - the evidence is about the past, not about now.

That data point gives us evidence they *didn't* sell *MachE* driving data.

It does *not* give evidence about their current actions.

Nor does it give evidence about other car models.

Nor does it give evidence about other time periods.

Ford may have done it in the past, or may do it on other models, or some combination.

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