Cars are growing ever-more complex, with their computerized infotainment and connected apps. There’s really no limit to the wonders modern cars can now perform: They can be remote-started from your cell phone, remember your favorite navigation destinations, and even send an email directly to Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida every time you fuck.
Mozilla recently reviewed the privacy practiced of 25 car companies, and all 25 flunked their tests. Tesla’s data practices were industry-worst, but no one in the field seems to have much interest in securing or protecting all that precious information they take from you — and, yes, they’re taking a lot. But Nissan and Kia stood out among the crowd for a unique data set that they collect: Information on how you bone down.
In their privacy policies, Nissan and Kia state they may collect information about your “sexual activity” and “sex life” respectively. Worse still, both companies seem interested in selling that data to whoever’s willing to pay. From Mozilla’s review of Kia:
One other thing that Kia does seem to do with your data is sell it. Yuck! We really hate that because they collect so much data and then say they can sell it to make more money. Nearly all the car companies we reviewed did this as well, and it sucks with everyone. They also share it with a lot of the same places they collect your data from. That list includes (once again) “affiliates,” “partners,” “service providers,” “advertising and social networks,” as well as “data analytics, data enhancement, and market research providers.” Kia might also comply with “governmental requests” for your data. Ugh, that word! At Mozilla, we believe your personal information should only be shared with the government and law enforcement when there is a legal obligation to do it. And, even then, as minimally as possible. Kia, please help yourself to our verbiage and do better. Governments shouldn’t simply be able to “request” people’s precise location data and information about their “sex life”.
And from its review of Nissan:
Well, not to be crude, but it would probably really suck have Nissan drawn inferences about you that lead them to believe you are a not so smart, sexually promiscuous, depressed alcoholic who likes to drive really fast on Fridays and Sundays and then sell those inferences to goodness knows who for targeted marketing purposes. We’re not even sure what that targeted marketing would look like and we also really don’t want to know.
In case you were wondering why cyberpunk dystopias feel so relevant right now, it’s because we live in one. Your car may well be collecting information about your sex habits, then turning around and selling that data to corporations so they can feed you more ads for collars, chains, and latex. If we’re going to live in Neuromancer, can we at least all get cool hacker aliases?