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OnStar Terms and Conditions Update Raises Privacy Concerns
PainMeds writes "An article by author Jonathan Zdziarski reveals that OnStar has recently updated their terms and conditions to allow the company to sell customer GPS coordinates, vehicle speed, and other information to third party marketers and analytics companies, where it could be used for a number of nefarious purposes. He says, 'To add insult to a slap in the face, the company insists they will continue collecting and selling this personal information even after you cancel your service, unless you specifically shut down the data connection to the vehicle after canceling. ... It sounds as though OnStar is poising part of their analytics department to be purchased by a large data warehousing company, such as a Google, or perhaps even an Apple. Do you trust such companies with unfettered access to the entire GPS history of your vehicle?"
Do you trust such companies with unfettered access to the entire GPS history of your vehicle?
Of course I don't. I don't own a vehicle that has the ability to be shut off remotely either, because I don't trust a company or the systems with something that important. I would not trust the electric company with my refrigerator either. The very fact the control exists with a 3rd party is unacceptable.
If you are worried about being tracked, OnStar is the least of your concerns. It applies to a single source of data that is not always with you.
Anybody that really cares about this should wonder what data is being collected with your smart phones, etc. Verizon can track you better than OnStar ever could.
All of your devices with their own dedicated data connections also track you far better. Sprint HotSpot? Those things can track you just like a cell phone too.
The only thing surprising about this is that OnStar tried slipping it into the TOS, except just selling the data anyways with some legal sleight of hand.
Time to get a screwdriver and cut out the cancer that OnStar has become.
I believe you can just pull a dedicated fuse, actually.
The fact that OnStar took pains to alter their ToS in this specific fashion means that they're clearly thinking about it and perhaps even planning to do it. The INTENT is clearly stated, and intent is all that matters. Since OnStar intends to make such a thing legally and technically feasible, they can't be trusted NOT to do it.
I just received a notice from State Farm Insurance that if I allow them to collect OnStar data I "MIGHT" get a discount on my insurance. Uhhh... yeah... I'll be sure to do that. (NOT) I'm fairly certain that this is only the tip of the iceberg. How long before the car automatically calls the police when you exceed the speed limit?
I used to work for a company that makes and is marketing a GPS tracking system exactly for this purpose. It includes their proprietary GPS tracking device and firmware, and server side software to store the data and do preliminary analysis (but the insurance companies mostly just care about the raw data and will do their own processing). And the insurance companies are very interested in buying data on where and how you drive. So this is pretty much a sure bet. I have to say that I wasn't very comfortable working for a company making 'big brother' devices.
Another use for this kind of data is for road charging programs for the government. Governments get a lot of their money for upkeep of the roadways from fuel taxes. But as fuel economy goes up, the relative tax revenue for miles driven (which translates to wear and tear on the roads) goes down. So many governments are looking to charging for road use. i.e. pay for the amount of miles/kilometers driven, based on the type of road (expressway, interstate/motorway, two lane blacktop, city cores, etc), time of day (peak/off peak hours), and type of vehicle. Something like Onstar technology fits in nicely with this too.
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