Is your driving data safe?

AAA, privacy advocates say more transparency needed

Lake Mary, FLA. – The automotive highway and the information super-highway are becoming one and the same and automakers are pledging to protect driver privacy.

[WEB EXTRA: Consumer Privacy Protection Principles ]

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers pledged to back a set of principles designed to protect driver data.

This comes as concern builds over how much information is being collected as we drive and how that data is being used. 

Today's cars offer everything from GPS navigation to cellphone integration.

In fact, according to the Institute of Physics, today's cars have more computing power than the system that guided Apollo astronauts to the moon. 

With all that technology comes rising concern over privacy.

The American Automobile Association is urging car makers, governments and other groups managing car data to adopt their "Consumer Rights for Car Data" guidelines.

"Overall we're working for three things, transparency, choice and security," says Kevin Bakewell, Senior Vice president and Chief Public Affairs Officer with AAA.

Bakewell said the organization wants to make sure it's easy for consumers to know what information is being collected and how it's being used.

"The issue of choice, they should be able to opt out if they don't want that information collected," Bakewell says. "And then security, with all the cybersecurity breaches these days, you can apply that same thing to automobile technology."

AAA says they have questions about a wide range of devices and features in today's automobiles. 

Event Data Recorders have been installed in approximately 40 million American cars. Often referred to as "black boxes," they continually record vehicle performance.

The initial purpose of the EDR was to determine the status of certain safety devices in order to develop better equipment. They are increasingly used by manufacturers, insurance agencies and law enforcement agencies for a variety of purposes. 

In addition to EDR's, other forms of data collection include, insurance company's monitoring devices, GPS services, concierge services like OnStar and toll transponders.

Bakewell says having an open dialogue between manufacturers, service providers and third-party vendors is the main goal of AAA's campaign.

"We're not saying it is being used in a bad way," Bakewell said. "We just don't know the answers to all those questions."


About the Author:

Paul is a Florida native who graduated from the University of Central Florida. As a multimedia journalist, Paul enjoys profiling the people and places that make Central Florida unique.

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