Electric cars went mainstream this century. And like most recent inventions, new shiny EVs are packed with smart tech that collects all sorts of data points. The info cars collect includes but is not limited to driving habits, charging patterns, and even preferred routes. The vehicles also maintain a good idea of a car’s health and general usage data. If a person digs deeper into the terms and conditions of brands such as Kia and Nissan, the driver would discover that the EVs would even have a green light to collect data on sexual activity and sex life. 

While geo points sound reasonable, records of sexual life cross a line. And support the notion that privacy is a luxury nowadays. Manufacturers claim it improves their products, and that may be true. But those practices also raise many privacy concerns. The data could be used to help R&D, but it can also be used for malicious purposes if it ends up in the wrong hands. Over the years, we’ve learned that big companies often fail to protect their customers’ privacy.

A case of Data usage in a tragic car incident

A mentally unstable soldier recently committed suicide seconds before making his electric car loaded with fireworks explode in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Law enforcement quickly traced the incident thanks to the new technology in his EV. The car manufacturer cooperated, sharing videos and data to help track the movements of the soldier, Matthew Livelsberger. It was easy for the electric car manufacturer to provide all these data points to the investigators. In fact, it was too easy! While the information was helpful in this case, it is worth knowing that such electric vehicles are also giant computers on wheels, and car manufacturers gather all sorts of data points they may choose to sell or use for their benefit.

Car manufacturers are prone to working with data brokers. And such data could also end up in the hands of a private bidder or the government. The chances of a government organization, such as the IRS, buying car data from electric car manufacturers are not great. Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of examples of tech companies selling out to data brokers or failing to shield their customer base from hacker attacks.

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A Data Leak exposes thousands of electric vehicle users

Volkswagen’s electric division was just notified by a cyber incident that exposed data of approximately 800k people. A white hat hacker organization, Chaos Computer Club (CCC), alerted the German car manufacturer that the company had left the details of hundreds of thousands of people and their cars exposed on Amazon Cloud. It seems like the leak was not intentional. Still, it is a fact that a simple misconfiguration in electric vehicles could have led to the exposure of nearly one million Volkswagen and Audi owners. Multiple terabytes of data have just been sitting unprotected on the Amazon Cloud! The exposed data included geolocation and other person-identifying details. While the vehicles affected were mostly in Europe and there are no reports of data misuse, this cyber incident highlights how electric cars collect vast amounts of data but fail to protect it.