Privacy4Cars app. Any experience or comments about this app?

[Mach1E]

Insurance companies are already doing this. My auto insurance is through State Farm. They keep pressuring us to install a device that monitors our driving “to get a discount”. For the moment they guarantee no increase in rates but there is no guarantee they won’t in the future and a friend who installed it said he got the least discount because the device was able to detect that he was using CarPlay. He said all he uses it for is to listen to Spotify and they knocked him down for that.

We refused the offer and I am sure many others have as well. I wouldn’t put it past them to pay someone else who got the data and didn’t have to ask permission. They are already paying for these devices they are putting in policyholders cars. And to be honest not getting a discount is really the same thing as getting penalized

That’s very different. It’s by choice.

What this thread is about is them buying your data and using it against you……… and that maybe we should do something to prevent it.

Again, feels like alien abduction insurance. Protecting yourself against a threat that doesn’t exist.

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[Mach1E]

Don't let your car collect unwanted data on you, just give it to our app instead and cut out the middle man...

Oh the irony.

Also not surprising.

If companies want to “take my data” and sell it to advertisers, go for it!

It’s the reason why smart TVs are dirt cheap.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/01/smart-tvs-sony-lg-cheap/672614/#

“Perhaps the biggest reason TVs have gotten so much cheaper than other products is that your TV is watching you and profiting off the data it collects. Modern TVs, with very few exceptions, are “smart,” which means they come with software for streaming online content from Netflix, YouTube, and other services.”

 

[macchiaz-o]

From what I understand about these programs - there's a pretty close to zero chance of getting any discount in a Mach E. And if you aren't accelerating faster than their ridiculous limits allow at least occasionally, the MME is probably not the best car for your needs.

I've earned a 20% premium discount with American Family Insurance and their KnowYourDrive app. That's the max discount possible with their program.

Plus it helps temper my road rage tendencies since I'm focused on maintaining my discount.

 

[phil]

I would be surprised…….. if they paid Ford for your individual driving data.

Almost positive that they don’t, and won’t.

Insurance carriers rate risk by groups. Only time you get rated individually is for tickets, claims and wrecks.

Prepare to be astonished. Auto insurers have for years been purchasing vast consumer data sets for use in rating and underwriting. These data sets are compiled by several competing data-aggregation vendors, and they are not very expensive. They include data on what magazines you (and I) subscribe to, what your credit rating is, what retail purchases you have made. Literally THOUSANDS of data fields at an individual level, for pretty much every American other than Ted Kaczynski.

Would they pay for individual-level driving data? Yes. Absolutely, they would. Guaranteed.

 

[Mach1E]

Prepare to be astonished. Auto insurers have for years been purchasing vast consumer data sets for use in rating and underwriting. These data sets are compiled by several competing data-aggregation vendors, and they are not very expensive. They include data on what magazines you (and I) subscribe to, what your credit rating is, what retail purchases you have made. Literally THOUSANDS of data fields at an individual level, for pretty much every American other than Ted Kaczynski.

Would they pay for individual-level driving data? Yes. Absolutely, they would. Guaranteed.

Again, where does my specific driving data equal higher rates for me (and no one else)?

I’m not saying they couldn’t do it (they could), just saying they don’t.

These conspiracy theories have been around a long time. Ever since OnStar showed up on GM products (1997). “oh no, they can track us!!!”

The fear then was that GM would sell our data to the government and they would mail us speeding tickets.

Everyone has a voluntary tracking device that we keep in our pockets. I’m even typing on it right now!

There is so little privacy these days, I just don’t see the point of blocking this one small thing.

It’d be like putting a bandana on your head to cover yourself up…….. when you’re naked and in a nudist colony.

 

[Shayne]

I was just reading about this app. Apparently car companies collect more info than I realized. Of course those EULA’s that none of us read give car companies the right to sell a lot of personal data to anyone they want. No surprise to most of us I am sure. This app deletes that data. Especially helpful when returning a rental car in which we may have used CarPlay.

My thoughts are that this creates some of the same issues that a VPN does. It simply transfers personal info from one entity to another. In other words are we deleting data from our car because we don’t trust Ford (Kia,GM etc) with it only to put that data potentially in the hands of some app developer.

I’m probably being a little more paranoid than usual after just binge watching Rabbit Hole Any thoughts?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...cts-data-on-you-how-to-delete-it/70220377007/

Just like your VPN service at one point if you are connecting to the WWW you need to trust someone. I have no data on my phone or car that I care about. That data is behind a VPN and my default block firewall. Nothing gets out unless you allow it to be there. You are the only one that controls your anonymity on the net do not expect others to.

You trust the app but not ford with your info? I give ford a lot of rights in conductivity to help development. You could just turn conductivity off in the car settings if the tin foil hat really sets in. I delete users at the end of a rental including mine. Normally 5 to 6 of them with all their info.

 

[macgyver60]

Here’s a weird update. I started this post just a couple days ago and out of the blue yesterday I get a notice on the screen in the car that I have elected to share my data with Ford and there is a setting to turn that off. That’s not news obviously and probably just coincidental but creepy that it happened so soon after writing this post. Maybe it is time for a tinfoil hat

 

[kdonnel]

Here’s a weird update. I started this post just a couple days ago and out of the blue yesterday I get a notice on the screen in the car that I have elected to share my data with Ford and there is a setting to turn that off. That’s not news obviously and probably just coincidental but creepy that it happened so soon after writing this post. Maybe it is time for a tinfoil hat

If it is the notification I am thinking about, then it periodically pops up on the Sync screen.

 

[Shayne]

If it is the notification I am thinking about, then it periodically pops up on the Sync screen.

As soon as we hear that Ford is sending info to peoples insurance companies to ding them we break out the tin foil. I am not that important and nobody cares what I am doing

 

[i8iridium]

I was just reading about this app. Apparently car companies collect more info than I realized. Of course those EULA’s that none of us read give car companies the right to sell a lot of personal data to anyone they want. No surprise to most of us I am sure. This app deletes that data. Especially helpful when returning a rental car in which we may have used CarPlay.

My thoughts are that this creates some of the same issues that a VPN does. It simply transfers personal info from one entity to another. In other words are we deleting data from our car because we don’t trust Ford (Kia,GM etc) with it only to put that data potentially in the hands of some app developer.

I’m probably being a little more paranoid than usual after just binge watching Rabbit Hole Any thoughts?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...cts-data-on-you-how-to-delete-it/70220377007/

To answer the question at hand, the app is just an instruction guide/video walkthrough on how to hit the master reset button on Sync. lol

If you really want privacy, pull the fuse for the TCU. Then you'll find out how quickly BlueCruise, up to date maps, remote start, remote charge status, OTAs, and PAAK quit working.

 

[VindictivePantz]

On the Android phone side, you can use DuckDuckGo's browser and turn on their "App Tracking Protection" which creates a VPN and blocks a disturbing amount of trackers, etc. from all apps on your phone. I've not noticed much from Ford's app, but it has blocked some tracking info from some of the EV charging apps.

It's nearly impossible to reduce your data sharing footprint, but something like this helps a little bit.

(And I know it does not help on the car side of things, but found that it does help chip away on the phone side - at least those of us with Android.)

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