The Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Technology has issued a warning to automakers that sell connected cars. Companies that offer such products “do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service,” it wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not “outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards,” the FTC wrote.
In 2023, the Mozilla Foundation published an extensive report examining the various automakers’ policies regarding the use of data from connected cars; the report concluded that “cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy.”
The FTC is not taking specific action against any automaker at this point. Instead, the blog post is meant to be a warning to the industry. It says that “connected cars have been on the FTC’s radar for years,” although the agency appears to have done very little other than hold workshops in 2013 and 2018, as well as publishing guidance for consumers reminding them to wipe the data from their cars before selling them.
The FTC says the easiest way to comply is to not collect the data in the first place.
In 6 months, automakers will be suing all the way to the Supreme Court challenging the FTC’s regulatory authority (like every frigging industry is doing for every regulatory body nowadays).
!RemindMe-6 months
They’re like a bunch of petulant children screaming, “I don’t want to, and you can’t make me!”.
The country needs far stronger privacy laws.
But that will never happen since we legalized bribery
In the past I would have been dismissive however the FTC seems to have been very active with enforcing consumer protections as of late so I remain hopeful.
Lina Khan, the current chair of the FTC, seems to have a history with anti-trust legal research and seems to actively care about pursuing anti-competitive industries.
I truly wish her all the best in this regulatory captured mess.
Good thing people voted hard in 2020.
I’m disappointed to learn that she was born British so she can never run for president in America.
… Not that the FTC chair is known to be a pipeline to the presidency, but I’m ready to turn over every stone at this point.
People who are blindly data driven piss me off so much. It leads to these practices where they demand data and act like they have the right to collect it.
They often don’t like to act like they have to properly protect the data either.
FTC: “We are very angry with you and we are going to write a blog post telling you how angry we are.”
We just need to pool money and start buying info from lawmakers’ cars. When it’s their info being published, I bet they’ll have a much more positive response to cracking down.
The FTC will take ten years to accomplish nothing of value – and even whatever fig-leaf ruling they issue will be sued into oblivion, or voided by the Supreme Court.
Privacy is dead because killing it was in the interest of too many wealthy and powerful companies, government agencies, and individuals for it to have ended up any other way.
Please don’t be another fed fake charade to paper over gross misconduct of our corpo daddies
FTC won’t do shit about it, calling it now
I mean, the FTC is doing something. It’s the courts I’m more concerned with.
Huh, i wonder if this is part of why western countries have been so against Chinese cars lately. Too much privacy.
