Ep.21 | Is your car spying on you and selling your data? Probably. (Guest: Andrea Amico)

Show Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to episode 21 of Privacy Lawls where I Donata Stroink-Skillrud speak with amazing privacy professionals, and we have some laughs along the way as well. Today I’ll be speaking with Andrea Amico about a topic that affects almost everyone, cars and privacy. Andrea is one of the world’s leading authorities on vehicle privacy and data security, and founder of Privacy4Cars, the first and only privacy tech company focused on identifying the challenges posed by vehicle data and creating solutions to better protect consumers and businesses.

So Andrea, thank you so much for joining me today, um, since you started a company called Privacy4Cars. I just have to ask you, are you a privacy guy or a car guy or both? Well, first of all, thank you for having me here today, Donta. I’m definitely a privacy person. Um, I drive a 13-year-old vehicle, which I personally love because a, the average age of a vehicle [00:01:00] in the United States.

So I like that. Uh, I can, I can relate to what most Americans drive on the road. Um. But, so by definition, I’m, I’m, I’m not a a a cars person. I, I do not itch to get into the, the latest version of a vehicle. Uh, I’m happy with my ride away. It is, it actually is much more private than the car, the equipment car I would’ve to buy today.

So I love what I have. That’s awesome. Yeah, my car is, uh, 2016 and it does not have all the fancy new bells and whistles, but there’s less things to break, so, uh, that’s, that’s always good. Um, how would you personally define privacy when it comes to cars? So, I, I. Occasionally watch over and over a video from the turn of the century in which, uh, um, in which Steve Jobs is defining privacy at a big tech [00:02:00] conference.

And what he says is privacy is will tell you what data we’ll collect from you. We’ll ask you if it’s okay, we’ll ask you again. And we’ll use it only for what we ask you permission to do it. And if you wanna change your mind, that’s okay. And ultimately, I think that this is really what privacy is about, isn’t it?

About choice. Um, it’s about defining, sharing what you want about yourself, when you want, for the purpose that you want, and nothing else. And when it comes to cars, I think in Mozilla, uh, said it best the last year when they published their, their report on automotive that, um, automotive is the worst category that ever encountered in the entire lifetime of that nonprofit.

Um, there’s a lot of challenges, I’m sure we’re gonna get into them today. [00:03:00] Yeah, it’s interesting because, you know, you don’t really think about it as a consumer of how many different things collect your data. Right? You know, you know, you go to a website and you input your contact information and you know your data’s collected, but there’s also things that you have that you don’t necess.

Necessarily realize you’re collecting your, your data. And, you know, I’m definitely guilty of this too. You know, I’ve rented a car, connected my phone, played my music, and then I returned the car to the rental place. And I don’t really do anything because, you know, my flight takes off in an hour and I’m already running late.

Um, and I get on the flight and, and I forget about it. But, um. When you rent a car, for example, you know, a lot of times you’ll see like 10 different devices that have been previously paired to a car, and you did a study in 2014 about this on how frequently and what kind of data is being left in rental and used cars for sale.

What did your study find? So back in the day, [00:04:00] uh, and by the way, I relate with the experience, right? I, I, uh, I, I’ve been guilty of the same thing myself, and I think that one of the reasons for that is because we don’t think of a car as an electronic device. Mm-hmm. Um, probably because the name car hasn’t changed, right?

So we went from typewriters to laptops. We went from. Phones to smartphone, but cars have been called cars. But reality that the same evolution has happened with vehicles, uh, 40% of the content of vehicles nowadays electronic. So it’s really not any different than your smartphone just happens to be bigger, have a lot more device, a lot more sensors, and collect a lot more data.

But RN that it’s just like a phone. Um, but back to your question, right? So when I, when I. When I started to look into this, you are right, I pulled a statistical sample of cars and, and I looked at how often vehicles contained it. And back then the average was that two out of three cars per [00:05:00] sale contain data of the prior owner.

We’re talking about, you know, your home address, your garage, their codes, what people you called and the the contacts and you know, all this kinda stuff and those numbers. Kept evolving in the wrong direction. And by that I mean that year over year we keep repeating analysis and it turns out that more and more vehicle have data behind, so the percentage is increasing, but also the depth of how much data is left behind those increasing because the growth is evolving.

Again, more sensors collect more data, and so when is left behind, there’s a bigger treasure throat. Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting because you’re totally right. You can see somebody’s home address. They usually save their work address, you know, whatever areas they’re traveling to the most frequently, um, or who they called and things like that.

Um, when looking at cars, are there certain types of cars that [00:06:00] collect more information than others? Um, it goes back to my previous question, right? Technology has evolved. So at the turn of the century, uh, very few cars had navigation and not many had Bluetooth. And when you sync your phone over Bluetooth, back then it just collected your Bluetooth identifier, the name of your phone.

And maybe a copy of your contacts and maybe some logs of, have you called or texted today? Like today you can find out what’s the precise model of phone that you have, uh, all sorts of identifiers, what the operating system is on it, what apps are running on it. There’s records of what photos you have taken with your phone and the full database, like the actual content, the text messages in there are much, much more, right.

So as. As you’ll hear this over and over right, as this evolution of technology happening, the equals, the capabilities of collect and store data [00:07:00] has exploded. It is interesting. There’s a new feature now in cars that I, I saw in a commercial where, um, the car can read off your text message to you, um, which I feel like could, number one, get a lot of people into trouble.

Um, you know, if they have a friend or their spouse in the car and it’s something they’re not supposed to know about, um, you know, or just the car knowing what the contents of those text message messages are. I think that can be really dangerous because that can, um. Reveal all kinds of personal information, like your religion, your sexual identity, all kinds of stuff.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, think about, you know, think about what’s in your text messages, right? From anything from the check in with your kids that you dropped off after school to. Uh, your medical appointment to a record of whatever credit card statement you have just gotten to, you know, literally whatever, right?

And, and that’s just like messages. Um, nowadays, cards, for instance, [00:08:00] learn. They can read your calendars, many of them can. Uh, they learn from your past habits. And so if you’re driving a new car, you may have had the experience that the car suggests, Hey, Andrea, is there any time to go to the airport next?

Yeah, well, how do they know about this? Because, you know, it’s in my calendar that I’m taking a flight and, and, and so they know that next thing I’m doing is to go to the airport. Mm-hmm. And, uh, again, there’s a lot of convenience that I’m not denying that. And I think a lot of people would love the convenience.

Um. I think it’s perfectly okay to deliver convenience and many features for zen new are, are, are based, you know, improved safety on vehicles. All of those things are wonderful. The challenge is that there’s not many of us who speak loudly about the fact that there’s a dark side to all of this. A lot of these data is collected so that you can be analyzed.

Micros segmented, targeted by companies, uh, so that your data [00:09:00] can be sold to all sorts of providers, including your insurance company, government entities, data brokers, and so on and so forth. And, and again, this is not apparent to most consumers. It’s really no disclosed. And we’ve also done studies in which when consumers go to dealership, they ask, Hey, I just drove a car.

Is it true that this car collect data? Is it true that my manufacturer has the rights to this data, can sell it and share it? Including to, you know, those kind of companies we’re talking about before, or the government typically, you get answers that are, no, no, no. Of course this would never happen. Uh, but it actually does.

Yeah, I, that’s. Very creepy. Um, so, so you know, if you’re in the market to purchase a car and you want to become more educated about privacy when it comes to cars, how do you do that? Um, I know your company’s, uh, released the vehicle privacy report. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I. So, I mean, the, the original answer should have been, you [00:10:00] know, go ask your dealer.

But unfortunately, again, we know that that’s probably not a great way to do so unless they, they, they, they really have had some additional materials and, and support which stability manufacturer do not provide to them. And so given that we wanted to lift the fog all. Ignorance or, you know, misinformation that was out there.

We thought, well, why don’t we give to consumers a simple way for them to understand at a high level, what is it that those thousands of words in legally companies put together to try to explain what is happening with their car. And so we embarked in this project, you know, several years ago, and then we published the first version.

Two years ago of the Equal Privacy Report. Essentially it’s a free tool for consumers. It is truly free. I’ve asked multiple times, how do you monetize it? We don’t including, we don’t track users [00:11:00] and we don’t have cookies on the page. That’s why you will not see a cookie banner. We, we actually don’t. Don’t care who you are, we just want to educate the public.

And so you go in there, you punch in the VIN of your car, and through that VIN we determine not only what’s the make, the model of the Euro, the manufacturer, but we go down to what features may be in your cars, what services may be in your cars, and has anybody owned that vehicle before, for which we have a record in which something that was good for your privacy, such as deleting data from the car was done before or not.

And so again, people go there. And then what we do is that we provide a set of icons so that in a few minutes you can get a sense of what it is that the manufacturer policy is, what data they collect, what is it shared, what features in your car, do you have a series exam, do you have Android out of, what do those things do?

Um, and if, uh, you enter who is your auto finance company and who’s your out insurance company, we’ll also try to tell you. [00:12:00] Do those companies have policies to have some protection of your data or they don’t? Um, and throughout that experience, we also try to prompt consumers into taking action, uh, that are positive for their privacy.

So we started with, I. Allowing consumers to appoint us as agents, which we do for free. Um, and now with the new version where we’re telling people, look, you wanna go and file for yourself, um, this is where you go. Uh, do you want to know how to reach out to your manufacturer? Here’s the phone number, here’s the website.

Here’s where you, here’s where you go and fill a form. By the way, you don’t like the answers you get, uh, make your voice heard. Click a button and will tell you, this is your local government agency that you can report issues you’re experiencing with your privacy. This is who your local state representatives, um, in the house and the Senate are.

So you can tell them what’s your experience of they care about the [00:13:00] privacy of your vehicle. I mean, the vehicle is the largest purchase most Americans make, and the fact that we don’t disclose to those consumers. They’re not only paying hard earned dollars, but they’re also paying daily with the streams of zeros and one that is used to monetize them.

I, I, I think it’s scandals. And so that’s really what we’re trying to do, is to educate the public, empower them with knowledge and take from hours down to minutes the effort it takes to take action and try to get. Better privacy. I love that it’s based on your car’s VIN number because you know, let’s say I go to toyota.com and I try to find privacy information and there’s reams and reams of information and I don’t know what part applies to me.

Um, it’s really cool that it’s based on the VIN number so you can know exactly what’s going on with your exact make and model and year of car. Yeah. And we try look, so some information is, you know, buy, [00:14:00] make, so. Po. Toyota has one set of, well, actually multiple sets of privacy policies and terms. But for instance, the fact that if you have an older car, right?

You and I have vehicles that don’t have telematics, what does it mean? There’s not a sim, there’s not a cell phone embedded inside your car, so that makes some of those documents, the data collections disclosures, that’s irrelevant. And so we’ll remove it from you. You drive the latest and greatest model that has all the bells and whistle, all the technology.

You’ll get more disclosure and more information because your car has more technological capabilities. So that’s what we’re trying to do. I read somewhere that, um, these cars nowadays can even collect how hard you break, um, and, and things like that. Is that true? Well, absolutely. So I mean, again, a car is just a giant version of your computer and your phone meshed together and a bunch of other stuff, right?

So, um, just like your [00:15:00] phone, it has microscopes and accelerometers. There’s all these sensors to determine how the vehicle is moving into space and everything is logged. Uh, but also your accelerator has sensors. Your brakes have sensors, your steering wheel has sensors. All of that gets combined together, so you can create a super, super precise.

Description of how that vehicle is traveling. Um, and so if you’re breaking hard, not only you will see that from a string of GPS points, just like your ways or Google Maps will do, but actually the sensors in the car will also validate and confirm and be, provide a much more precise picture of how you’re actually driving.

Um, and the scary part is that some of these data may common haunt you. Yeah, so I, I did see a report about that, that the driving data was, um, in some instances shared or sold, um, to insurance companies and some people’s insurance premiums were going up because of [00:16:00] that. And they had no idea that this was collected or shared.

Yeah, there are many, many class actions now, um, based exactly on this. And, uh, there’s also attorney generals in various states that are taking action. Um. They are arguing that, uh, this is unfair and deceptive behavior by part, not only of manufacturer, but the insurers have been dragged into it and other service providers have been dragged into it.

Um, the, the logic that they have is if consumers have been clearly told. And then it would’ve been a thing, but the fact that this disclosure was buried into very long, complex legal documents and that people didn’t realize that when they were buying a car, they were agreeing to all these things. That’s what made it in the eyes of these attorney generals, unfair and deceptive.

And that’s why you have so many lawsuits going on right now. I think so. I’m sure a lot of [00:17:00] people would’ve said no if they would’ve known that, you know, this data was being collected, shared with the insurance provider, and then used to make insurance decisions. I think a lot of people would’ve said no.

Um, apart from, you know, the, the sharing and the selling. All the data that’s collected by these cars, could that be accessed by hackers and as well to and used to compromise your security? Certainly, yes. Again, think of your car not any differently than your laptop or your smartphone, right? Data that is collected by those devices.

It goes into two places. One, it stays on the device, and unfortunately, while your phone is encrypted and while your laptop device is encrypted, your most cars are not. And so I, I want you to think that every time you sold a car, every time you return a rental car, just like you were saying before, without deleting the data, is like if you handed your smartphone to a complete stranger.

Most strangers are nice people. They will [00:18:00] not do anything, but do you really want to take the chances? But that’s what happens today with more than four out of five cars, this data left behind. Excellent. The second thing is that newer cars have, again, this cellular collection, and so your car receives and sends data.

And so your data is not only just in the car, it’s in the cloud, which really means, you know, in the, in the computing systems of. Many, many companies, not just a manufacturer. And unfortunately, there’s a very, very long streak of examples of data breaches. I mean, I, I read about a data breach of a company in emotive space at least once a week, and typically more often than that.

And so, um, and so that’s, that’s a scary thought. Um. And, uh, you know, our mantra has always been around how do we help consumers minimize their data footprint because the safest data state that doesn’t exist, that’s [00:19:00] been deleted. And how do we enable consumers to make informed and smart choices? Um, and that’s what gave birth to the call privacy report.

Very cool. So when it comes to the responsibility for this, obviously a lot of that responsibility falls to the manufacturer of the vehicle, but do dealerships or car rental companies themselves have any type of responsibility to prevent or correct these types of issues? Yeah, so actually, you know, I, I see a lot of action and attention, especially in the press.

All manufacturers and look, currently they have a number of responsibilities given from, you know, starting from the fact that they design the vehicles in a certain way, um, and that some of them collect data directly from, from the vehicles through these telematics connections or other ways, but reality that the picture is much more complex.

Uh, this is like me saying that. The privacy challenges with [00:20:00] laptops reside with Dell, HP, and whoever else, right? That’s a very, very narrow view. Reality is that there’s a massive ecosystem of companies that trade, receive, sell, share data, but also the companies that physically have possession of the car are under the law, essentially in the same position of holding a.

Hard drive that is unencrypted contains of personal data and many, many laws state that they have a fiduciary responsibility. Frankly, today, in many cases, it’s not met. Many companies do have programs. Again, we try to make it visible on vehicle privacy reports. Um, and so for instance, some of your. Um, audience, when they go and try to enter for the name of their auto finance company, may be surprised to know that they have a program in place to protect the data whenever their car comes at the end of a lease or if the vehicle is repossessed or, or, or something else happens to the vehicle.

So if they end up owning the car, [00:21:00] they’ll actually delete the data because they wanna take good care of the data of their customers, but some don’t. And the point of making it visible. Because we think it’s important that consumers know because hopefully consumers will make financial choices based on that.

I think that the more consumers are empowered with knowledge and the more they show to companies that they’ll prefer companies that do better things for privacy, the more privacy will improve across the ecosystem. So to ask you about the permanent headache that all of us privacy professionals face, the state privacy law, patchwork, very curious to know, um, are cars that are sold in certain states that have comprehensive privacy laws?

So for example, let’s say a car being sold in California, does it come with more privacy protections or the same standards, um, or the same standards applied within the entire United States? [00:22:00] Uh, so, um, the size is all of us hearing about the private Well, so, um, look, the, the first of all, there is clearly a, the, your theoretical protection.

Change depending on where you live. That’s a very, very hard reality for not only Americans everywhere around the globe. Okay? So if you have laws that protect your privacy, you start from a theoretical certain point. So if you, if you, I live in Georgia, right? Georgia doesn’t have a privacy policy. I can tell you that.

Most manufacturer will say that you shouldn’t have any control over your data. There’s no meaningful way for you to assert your preferences over your data. There really isn’t because they’re provided to you because they’re not mandated by law. Okay? But there are some states that have great protections, but the [00:23:00] practical application of those protection is fundamentally lacking.

And I’ll give you two example, like just last week, uh, the data in which we’re recording this. Um, and so probably it’s a, it’s a month by the time that people will, will listen to this. Um, a auto manufacturer was found in California because. The California Privacy Protection Agency says they have not given a practical way for consumers to have meaningful privacy choices in the way that the law mandates this supposed to happen.

So even though those consumers in California have theoretically some of the best rights in the United States in practice, this is one not happening or was not happening to the extent that the law actually is supposed to work. Mm-hmm. I’ll give you a second example. We have, I. Again, through vehicle privacy report, consumers can appoint us as an agent.

We had hundreds of consumers from Oregon, and Oregon is a very interesting [00:24:00] state for us because one of the rights that consumers have in Oregon is they can not only ask companies to tell them what are the generic categories of data and what are generic categories of companies to share with. No, no, no.

In Oregon, you can say, what is the exact list of companies you shared my data with? And we filed hundreds of those, and people will be shocked to hear, but zero, 0%, not a single one of them was answered within the 45 days stated by the law or ever. We’re still waiting for responses, so even though consumers may have rights in certain places in the world, it doesn’t mean that those protections are actually in place.

Yeah, and I dunno if you have an audience in Europe, but you know, I think that everybody looks as GDPR as possibly the best framework for privacy in the globe. I can tell you that I today feel that consumers in [00:25:00] America, at least parts of America, get much better privacy protections than consumers in Europe.

It is interesting that you mention Europe. So I’m Lithuanian and my husband and I go to Lithuania all the time to see my family and my cousin, um, purchased this really nice new car for his work and every single time he started his car, the consent popped up saying, are you okay with us collecting, using, and sharing your data?

And you know, the first couple times he turns on the car, he clicks. Yes. I’m like, no, you should click no. And uh, you know, he starts clicking no. And then he, you know, gets out of the car, gets back in, and then eventually he just ends up clicking anything to make that popup go away, um, because he’s so sick of it.

So do you think that, you know, that kind of decision fatigue is really the best way to approach consent when it comes to cars? Well, I, I think that the law is pretty clear on that, right? So those kind of. Those kind of, um, [00:26:00] UXs user, user interfaces and user experiences, the FTC defines them as dark patterns or, you know mm-hmm.

I think the dark pattern is, is the most commonly used term for it, and essentially it’s, it should be unlawful to build an experience that essentially nudges continuously people into making choices that are bad for their privacy. Because of exactly kind of things that, that, that you’re describing, right?

Because it’s annoying because you just want to go it away because you just wanna drive. Um, I have a similar experience. I, my parents are in Italy, uh, the, the, the, the car that my mom and dad have, same thing. You started as a pop-up, but if you say no after a while that you drive, it pops, he pops it up again.

So, you know, you’re driving, you’re looking at navigation like I’m not familiar Right. With many places. And the navigation up and the public comes in and now you, you know, now you have a distraction problem too. Yeah. Um, and, and [00:27:00] so yeah, these are some of the wonderful examples that we have in automotive.

Um, and unfortunately they’re extremely common. Yeah, especially while you’re driving, I mean, that’s so dangerous because you could get into a car accident because you’re reading that consent popup, you know, and then every time you start the car, I mean anybody, even with the patience of of a saint, will eventually start just clicking whatever.

And if you think about it, this is really the equivalent of a cookie banner, right? Mm-hmm. And with cookie banners, we eventually figured out that a choices must be symmetrical. You cannot keep an, like, imagine if I go on a website and I get a cookie banner, and I say, no, I don’t want any cookies. But every link you click, you get another pop, it says, Hey, have you changed your mind?

Hey, do you want to gimme your data now? Like nobody will tolerate this. Yeah. Um, that’s pretty much the norm. Right. And also the other thing is that, fortunately with websites, the, the, we started to see, [00:28:00] uh, the emergence of global opt-out mechanisms. Um, and when it comes to IOTs and cars are just, just the largest, most expensive iot that there is, but it is an iot, right?

Um, those things have not been accepted by the industry, and there’s a tremendous amount of pushback. On using universal opt-out mechanisms to say no to IOTs? Hmm. Yeah, that’d be pretty cool if, uh, for example, on your phone you could say, I don’t want any of my devices to track me, including my car. And it, it did that for everything that you own from your smart alarm clock to your washing machine, to your car.

Uh, yes. And in fact, you know, a couple of years ago I started to think with the idea of how we create an opt out. Uh, universal optout for cars and. I invented something and, [00:29:00] and then we started to test it. We realized it didn’t work just for cars, but it worked for TVs and routers and smartphones, et cetera.

And when Colorado last year had a, um, an open call, I think for, for, you know, universal Optout make, we submitted this idea, which is called Optout Code. I won’t spend time telling you about it, but it’s just literally as simple as renaming your device. Um, and. It works. Um, uh, and if, uh, your audience is interested, just go to opt out code.com and read about it.

And I think it’s such a cool idea. Uh, it’s entirely nonprofit. Like there’s, it was a literally a free gift to humanity. This idea of let’s create an opt out for IOTs. Uh, I think we’re gonna do something with it later this year, but, you know, time will tell. That’s awesome. Yeah. The world needs gifts like that because we’re all sick of just consenting to everything every other minute.

Um, in the US we’ve seen the Federal Trade Commission take [00:30:00] some actions against, um, automotive companies. Can you tell us just a little bit about those actions, like the actions against General Motors, um, or dealer builds? Yes. Uh, I mean, and again, at the time of the recording, um, the. Two of the commissioners have just been fired.

So who knows what’s gonna happen with the Federal Trade Commission. Um, but, uh, I think the General Motors one is probably the, the, the most interesting one because, um, the General Motors settled with the Federal Trade Commission. Um, and essentially I agreed that they would not sell. The data of consumers until 2030, there were no fines.

And you know, when I talk to people, a lot of people say, oh my gosh, there were no fines. This is irrelevant. But actually it’s extremely meaningful because if you run the math on what General Motor was planning. What? What was the value of the data that they attached to it [00:31:00] in what they told investors?

That’s a very, very large number. It’s probably in the order of magnitude of a billion dollars, so it is actually a very, very meaningful precedent. I guess we’re all gonna wait and see. What’s gonna happen because that that action is specific to General Motors only. It does not apply to other manufacturers, and it’s very unclear at this time whether other manufacturer will take a queue and say, maybe we should have a more privacy, respectful way of doing business, or whether they’re gonna keep going down their current path.

Hopefully we see more companies doing that, you know, voluntarily and then also having this extended past 2030 as well. Uh, I sure hope so. Look, look what, what, what I do notice, what I think is very, very important, which is ultimately the thing will reshape the industry in automotive, is that consumers start to care.

Mm-hmm. Uh, since that, this is done about [00:32:00] third party that says that six out of 10. Car buyers would buy a vehicle from a different brand over privacy. Wow. And one in 10 buyers of cars claim that they already did. Now I have no, you know, those numbers are debatable and you know, again, we have not done the analysis ourselves.

But if it is true that consumers are increasingly curious about privacy and it is increasingly easier for them to understand what are good privacy choices and bad privacy choices. And they’re willing to spend the money in a different way. That is what ultimately would change the industry because I often tell people that privacy today were safety was with vehicles in the Pinto era.

Um, companies were building cars that were not very safe and. People got in accidents and companies were running a spreadsheet with, well, [00:33:00] should we change the design of the tank so that when I’m hit from behind at a certain speed, a certain angle, the part goes boom, and people die inside? Or should we just leave a desire at this?

Because if I run the math on how many people will die on many lawsuits and how much is gonna cost me to settle it, then maybe we’re better off not doing anything today. We live in that world when it comes to privacy. Companies are running spreadsheets. Deciding what should we do? And the current business model is we want to collect data from cars, we wanna monetize it in a variety of way through additional services or you know, additional revenue that we get directly from consumers because we sell it to other companies.

And what is the risk that this is gonna yield the negative results? And I think the more consumers show that they’re willing to spend their money in a different way. And the more you will see that companies will have an incentive in doing things better. Ultimately, what I’m begging the [00:34:00] industry to do is will please somebody do for privacy What Volvo did for safety, while people were still debating should we put safe belts or not, they were putting airbags in cars.

And still today, if you ask Americans, what’s the safet car out there? They will tell you it’s a Volvo. By the way. It’s not. But that build a brand that lasted 40 years. And my hope is somebody will understand it since so many consumers want it and nobody’s given it to them. The smart thing to do is to actually give better privacy to consumers.

I hope so too. I I really hope so, because I think we’re all gonna be better off with more privacy protections in, in these cars. Um, so your company Privacy4Cars, can you tell us a bit more about the resources that you provide to businesses, like your documentation on how to wipe data from cars? Yeah, so we, um, we are a B2B company.

I think a lot of people think that we are a consumer company. We, we do a lot of free stuff for consumers. Uh, again, we provide a lot of information. We provide a [00:35:00] lot of free tools for consumers, and then we have the industrial strength, uh, version of what we do for consumers, for businesses. And so essentially we help companies such as dealerships.

When you bring in a trade in, they have the tools. To reliably and efficiently delete data from the cars and give you a certificate to show you that they are the good people you should be doing business with. They are the ones who put badges on their inventory. So when you are in the comfort of your homes, you start to think about.

I wanna buy a car or some dealers will not say anything about privacy. Some of them will show you what does the vehicle privacy report for? This car says, so at least you start to have information you can use in your purchasing decisions. Um, we also work with a lot of fleets. We work with auto finance companies and so on and so forth.

So we have built an ecosystem of companies that want to do the right thing. Again, a part of building vehicle [00:36:00] privacy reports was we wanted to show the consumer. There’s actually good folks out there, they want to do the right thing and shouldn’t they, shouldn’t they get credit for it? What I thought was really cool, um, I went on your website and I could search dealerships by my area that are privacy friendly and I thought that was so cool and I wish I would’ve found that before I bought my car.

Um, but how does your dealership partner program work? Uh, well, they, they subscribe to, to, we offer a service, usually a digital service, right? So they, they subscribe to a set of solutions, um, and there’s different flavors. Um, but essentially what most dealers do is that they. Buy the rights to use our tools to delete data from, uh, from cars to produce the certification, both internally for compliance, but also again, to tell consumers, this is why you should trust us and not a dealership across the street, or do one across town or the same brand.

If you wanna bring back [00:37:00] your lease, do you wanna do it at a dealership that promises that will protect your data? Or one that doesn’t even know what that means? So. What we’re really trying is again, to make trust valuable, to make privacy a talking point because frankly it should, because again, cars are no longer the mechanical things that I drove when I was young.

Um, they’ve become highly computerized systems and I think people should know and should have tools and should have resources. It’s a cool way to use, um, privacy as a competitive advantage too. Yes. And, and, and by the way, the dearest that, that, that use, they love us because just like you started with, you know, you have your own story about a rental car.

I promise you, if you ask a person, everybody has a story. Yeah. Everybody has a story. And in fact, you know, some dealers, they go like, eh, okay, I’ll. Pilot it at one store and invariably, you know, we ask them [00:38:00] what’s the, you know, what is the story you heard from a consumer? And somebody’s gonna say, you know, I had this person that came to my dealership and they realized that sold the car, they treated it in the car.

And they were worried two weeks later that their data was still in the car. We told, don’t worry, because you know, we actually take care of it. Here’s a copy of your certificate. Mm-hmm. Like, what a difference. Right. Yeah, loyalty. This, this is a very, very big purchase. A car today. The average new car costs nearly $50,000.

Don’t you want to do business with somebody that you trust? And by the way, also true for dealers is your only point of differentiation is gonna be, you know, do I sell it for $50,000 or 49 and 900? Right? And so it’s just a pricing thing. Or do you want tell people. Bring the car here because you can trust me and I’ll do the very best I can with the best tools that exist to protect your data.

Absolutely. [00:39:00] Yeah. I would definitely wanna go to somebody who takes that seriously. And it’s really cool that your, your tool shows that. Um, so last question for you. Where can people learn about you and your company? Uh, well, they can go to Privacy4Cars, which is spelled privacy number four, cars with an s.com.

Um, and again, I think that the, the please, my call to action to everybody is check your car, go to v call privacy report.com. Punch in the vin. The vin. The VIN number is the identifier is like the serial number of your laptop. It’s, you can see through the windshield. There’s a label typically when you open the door on the driver’s side.

Punch in the number and learn something about your card that I promise you you didn’t know before. And I think it’s gonna open your eyes to the fact that. The car is much more than a mechanical thing, and I don’t think you’re gonna look at your car the same way you did before If you, if you go to vehicle privacy report, that’s awesome.

That’s a really cool tool. I’m excited to use it myself and, and [00:40:00] see what they got about me. Um, so thanks so much, um, for taking the time to talk with me today about cars and privacy. Um, and for any of our listeners, please make sure to subscribe, um, so that you don’t miss our next episode. Thank you, Donata.