GPS Maker TomTom Submits Your Speed Data To Police

An anonymous reader writes "The GPS systems in TomTom's Live range all feature built-in 3G data cards, which feed location and route information back to a central server. According to CNET, this data, along with users' speed information, is being made available to local governments and the police." From the article: "Knowing the cops can see where you're driving and how fast you're going is eye-opening stuff, but TomTom says the data is anonymous and can never be traced back to an individual user or device. Ordinarily, we'd be reassured by this, but we recall Apple saying something similar before the location-tracking excrement hit the phone-carrying fan."

Comments

Why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear TomTom,

Why would you go and do a stupid thing like this? I loved your products, but I will purchase them no more.

For those who won't RTFA;

[fridaynightsmoke]

The story is that the data was used by Dutch police to determine where to set up speed traps. The data was NOT used to go after any TomTom users for speeding.

It's still a somewhat dastardly tactic, but not quite what people on here are seeing it to be.

Re:For those who won't RTFA;

[Teun]

Yesterday morning he story broke via the largest Dutch newspaper and last night I received a mail from TomTom stating this was not what they expected and they would prevent any further use of their data for this purpose.

What actually happened is they sell the aggregated data to whoever is interested, one company distilled out the stretches of road where most speeding happened and sold it to the police.

Then the police used this to select places for speed traps.

Re:Apple apologist

[Dynetrekk]

TomTom was already on my no-buy list for other reasons. E.g, when you buy a new map, the old one is deleted and you have to re-buy it. Also, maps are more expensive than devices, which obviously is equivalent to environmental crime. TomTom is one of those companies that just screw you over. But I do have to say, the GPS unit I have, does work pretty nicely, although the processing power of the thing is abysmal - you see it when you compute long routes and compare to the iPhone version.

Re:Don't just comment here!

[Teun]

Last night, some 12 hours after the news came out, I received an apologetic mail from them promising this would no longer be allowed plus a voucher for a free update to their data base of known speed traps.