If you’re storing or not driving your vehicle for several weeks, PennyGem’s Justin Kircher has some maintenance tips to avoid repair bills.
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What kind of data is your car collecting about you?
Location
In the 21st century, cars are hip to the latest features, from quality-of-life improvements, such as backup cameras and keyless start, to the newest technical safety improvements. At one time, it was novel and exciting something like OnStar could identify where your car was and send help for you in the event of an accident. The location is collected to streamline the use of any onboard satellite navigational system.
But now location data can be sold and used by outside companies for any variety of purposes. Perhaps more importantly than your location at any individual time, it includes your patterns of locations over time—data that can form a “heat map” of where you go and when.
Component usage
“Component” is just a fancy word for car parts. Over the decades, car component monitoring has grown more advanced, from a “check engine” light to a buffet of icons and colors. That’s because more car parts have sensors inside them. Tires indicate when they’re low, the battery knows when it’s dead, and the oil reservoir raises a flag when it’s empty. From there, it is a short trip to record that data over time, allowing one data collector to know how your entire car is doing at any given time.
Images from onboard cameras and radar
If your car has a now-common backup camera, you know there’s one camera on your car. But now, it’s likely there’s also a camera inside your car that’s pointed at your face. It can check your emotions are based on your expression. It can also see whether you’re looking at the road while you drive and alert you to get your eyes back on the road via onboard indicators. Even the radar system can put together a “picture” of the surroundings of your car based on the radar readings from multiple sensors—think stereo surround sound but for your physical surroundings.
Voice commands
Within the last few years, we learned Amazon Alexa and other voice systems are always listening. Meaning once these systems hear a trigger word or phrase such as “Hey Alexa,” they can pick up any notable noise and record it, including when you blow your nose or sing along with the radio. OnStar, which comes preinstalled on most Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, and Buick vehicles, may collect “voice command information,” according to its privacy statement. Hopefully, that means the car’s recorded and transmitted data only includes when you use the special activation words that wake up the system.
But if you’re planning to do anything you wouldn’t want to be broadcasted or sold to a marketing corporation, you may want to stay mum in the car.
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