In the process of using smartphones, many people have experienced such "weird" events: the last moment they just mentioned a topic, the next moment they open the phone's short video/shopping app, and they will get content recommendations related to this topic.
As ordinary people, it is difficult for us to verify whether there is a cat in this, but at the same time, it is difficult for us to find a reason to convince ourselves that there is no cat in it.
As cars become more and more intelligent, the same anxiety is transferred to cars. Smart cars, which also have cameras and microphones, are just as capable of collecting user information as smartphones. In particular, some time ago, there was a high-speed fuel consumption test event and a winter test event, and the car company retrieved the vehicle data for the first time after the self-certification. We found that car companies want to get the data of a certain car in the background, which is like looking for something.
After learning more about the relevant information, the big coffee believes that it is necessary to talk about the privacy of car owners.
If we want to protect our privacy, we must first know that smart cars can access our user data. Similar to smartphones, the cameras and microphones in the car can easily pick up our images and sounds. In addition, formal data about the vehicle, such as driver operations, intelligent driver assistance systems, vehicle location, driving routes, etc., are collected and stored by the manufacturer.
At the beginning of this year, there was a privacy scandal related to Tesla.
According to Reuters, nine former Tesla employees revealed that from 2019 to 2022, Tesla employees could privately share videos and photos recorded by customers' car cameras through an internal messaging system. A former employee broke the news that there was a video of a man approaching Tesla naked and being captured by an in-car camera. They even shared some car crash videos with each other.
In 2021, they saw a video of a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area and knocking a child riding a bicycle into the air. The crash video was circulated through a one-on-one chat at Tesla's office in San Mateo, Calif. Tesla's San Mateo office employees, mostly young people in their 20s and early 30s, reportedly share funny videos or photos they see with each other.
From this incident, we can know that the cabin of a smart car is really not a completely private space, at least what you have done and said in or near the car can be seen and heard by a third party, although it may only be an insider of the car company.
At the beginning of September, the Mozilla Foundation, an internationally renowned non-profit organization, conducted a survey on information security by car companies, and the following is a ranking of 25 car brands on privacy protection (the lower the ranking, the worse the performance, and the X is not satisfactory protection), and the results can be described as "shocking". According to the Mozilla Foundation, new car products are full of sensors, cameras, microphones, and collect users' private information, and the auto industry's poor privacy protection methods make modern cars a privacy nightmare.
How is our data stored and used?The following is the privacy policy of a certain luxury brand's platform service, I believe that the privacy policy of different brands is similar, we can refer to it.
First of all, according to the privacy policy, the manufacturer can collect the user's ID number, name, phone number, address and other information, and of course, some data related to the vehicle's driving, all within the scope of the manufacturer's collection of information. The cameras and microphones that everyone is concerned about do not explicitly indicate that manufacturers can take the initiative to use the cameras and microphones in the car to shoot and record.
Regarding the sharing, transfer and public disclosure of personal information. First of all, the user's personal information may be shared with the manufacturer's affiliates, service providers and authorized partners, and under statutory circumstances, personal information will be shared in accordance with the provisions of laws and regulations, the needs of litigation and dispute resolution, or the requirements of administrative and judicial authorities in accordance with the law.
As for the transfer, it occurs when the automobile manufacturer undergoes merger, division, dissolution, liquidation and other procedures, but in this process, the privacy policy is still valid. As for public disclosure, it may only take place if the user's consent is required alone, or if it is required by law, legal procedure, litigation or mandatory requirements of government authorities.
Based on the above information, we can basically understand that if we find that the images and recordings in the car have been illegally obtained (even if they are not published), we can also protect our rights and interests in accordance with the privacy policy. Theoretically speaking, the manufacturer's protection of users' personal information is still relatively in place. But there is still another problem here, that is, it is difficult to obtain evidence, unless the user's information is publicly disclosed, it is difficult for users to know whether their privacy has been obtained and exploited.
So in the end, I want to say that in the era when the carriages are generally equipped with cameras and microphones, we really can't completely treat the carriage as an absolutely closed space, or we still have to have enough awareness of the protection of important personal privacy behaviors to avoid being used by people with ulterior motives.