Episode Details

Modern cars are chock full of sensors and connected to the internet via built-in cellular modems. That’s a recipe for massive data collection. Last September, Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team released a blockbuster report how much data our cars were gathering and it was absolutely staggering. According to the hard-to-find privacy policies, your car can collect extremely personal information including precise location, contact lists from your phone, call and message data, and – believe it or not – even “sexual activity”. Today, I’ll walk through this report and its implications with the head of Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included project, Jen Caltrider.

Interview Notes

• Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/ 
• Mozilla’s car report: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/ 
• Mozilla’s report on AI chatbots: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/happy-valentines-day-romantic-ai-chatbots-dont-have-your-privacy-at-heart/ 
• Donate to Mozilla Foundation: https://donate.mozilla.org/ 
• Mozilla layoffs: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozilla-downsizes-as-it-refocuses-on-firefox-and-ai-read-the-memo/ 
• Sign the petition to stop car data gathering! https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/car-companies-stop-your-huge-data-collection-programs-en/ 
• Bruce Schneier article in Slate: https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/ai-mass-spying-internet-surveillance.html 

Further Info

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• Check out my book, Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons: https://fdsd.me/book 

Table of Contents

Use these timestamps to jump to a particular section of the show.

• 0:02:39: What were some top finding from your car privacy report?
• 0:05:14: Which cars did you review and how did you evaluate them?
• 0:09:44: How was I notified and how did I consent to my car’s privacy policy?
• 0:10:39: What are cars tracking? Are electric cars any worse than gas cars?
• 0:13:55: What third party data mining is going on in my car?
• 0:20:41: Is there a way to opt out of data sharing?
• 0:24:10: Is less data collected in Europe?
• 0:26:02: Where is all my data stored? Locally, in the cloud, or both?
• 0:28:52: Is the data at least se