Hyundai, Nissan, Tesla…these brands that don’t respect your privacy

Here’s one study which is likely to make a lot of noise. Members of the non-profit foundation that manages the Mozilla community (the Mozilla Firefox browser, for example), have looked into the issue of the protection of private data in the automotive sector. Their findings are damning to say the least, and the title of their analysis sets the tone: “cars are the worst product category we’ve ever looked at on the issue of privacy.” Just that ! It’s simple, the 25 manufacturers covered by the study have all received the “Privacy not included” label created by the Mozilla Foundation, it had never happened to them in the past.

Almost no customer is immune

First observation made by those in charge of the study, all brands collect your personal data, all without exception. They “collect more than necessary” and use the collected information for purposes that have little to do with your vehicle. These may be details concerning your health, others relating to your genetic characteristics or even your emotional life (we will come back to this).

As if that weren’t enough, 84% of the manufacturers surveyed share your data with service providers or brokers, 56% with the government or authorities “in response to an informal request” and 76% resell it. Only Renault and Dacia give their customers the possibility of deleting their personal data, all the others do not. An explanation is given for this, the GDPR regulation that the two brands mentioned seem to follow assiduously insofar as they sell mainly in Europe.

Zero points for Tesla

Now, all of the offending brands more or less respect their customers’ data. In this little game, Tesla receives the dunce cap. Already, a few months ago, the Reuters news agency alerted us to this subject. The Mozilla Foundation confirms what it was saying, namely that Tesla cares little about the privacy of Model 3, Model Y or Model S owners. Use of data, data control, history, security, artificial intelligence , the Palo Alto builder is the only one of all to be pinned on each of these criteria. Few brands have recorded such a score. With Tesla, that makes… two in total. The fact that the AI-powered Autopilot was involved in a total of 17 fatalities and 736 crashes did not speak in its favour.

Worrying results also for Hyundai, Kia or Nissan

But beware, a manufacturer like Nissan has almost nothing to envy Tesla. As the study points out, “Nissan has earned its second-to-last spot as it collects some of the grimmest data around.” To put it simply, your sexual activity does not escape the Japanese manufacturer. It would apparently be the same for Kia. Equally troubling, Hyundai’s data policy provides that any formal or informal request from the government or authorities will be met with a favorable response. So many reasons that simply prompted the foundation to create a petition that you can discover ici.

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