[LINK] Car insurers may soon know your tyre pressure, and penalise you for it

[David Boxall]

Privacy? What privacy?
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What if your insurance company raised the premium on your car because 
you didn’t maintain its recommended tyre pressures?

Or you advertised it for sale and a potential buyer started negotiating 
down the asking price based on detailed knowledge of its service records?

Don’t scoff, it could happen thanks to data harvesting.

Data what? It’s the name applied to the mountains of information now 
being generated by the new vehicles we buy.

Who owns this data and who gets to access it is set to emerge as a big 
deal as connected cars become ever more common.

In theory, the manufacturer of a car could sell this information about 
your driving habits and behaviours to a third party for profit.

An insurance company seeking information about how you look after your 
car, or how you drive it is just one example.

“Are you maintaining the vehicle when it comes up for resale? That’s the 
sort of data people would love to get their hands on”, says Associate 
Professor Mark Gregory, a data security expert at Melbourne’s RMIT.

Cars connected to you via a smartphone app and back to their makers via 
an embedded modem (a sim card) have been around for some years but 
mainly confined to luxury brands.

But one of Australia’s biggest vehicle brands, Ford, has just announced 
it will start rolling out embedded modems in every vehicle it sells from 
mid-2020, starting with Australia’s number two selling vehicle, the 
Ranger utility.

Ford is promoting the customer features the embedded modem provides, 
including remote vehicle unlock/lock, remote start, vehicle status and 
remote monitoring, live traffic updates, a vehicle locator and vehicle 
health alerts.

These functions will be available to vehicle owners via a smartphone app 
called FordPass.

But in theory, at least FordPass can also feed saleable information 
about driver habits back to Ford.

“FordPass is an opt-in feature, not something that is automatically 
activated should the owner of the vehicle choose not to use it,” a Ford 
Australia spokesman told The New Daily.

“Data is a valuable resource, and could be used to bring benefits in 
terms of product development and a better understanding of how products 
and services are used.”

But Dr Gregory told TND data harvesting regulations needed to be 
tightened by the federal government.

“Who owns the data and what rights do the vehicle owner have in regards 
to the data?

“Where’s it going to be stored and how is it going to be accessed and 
released?

Another twist on this is could vehicle owners take a cut from the 
dollars generated by the sale of their data?

Data harvesting falls within the responsibilities of the federal 
Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and 
Communications. The protection of personal information is covered by the 
Privacy Act 1988.

A spokesman told The New Daily by email:

“Privacy protections set out under federal legislation would apply to 
vehicle ‘data harvesting’.

“If an individual considers their personal information has been 
mishandled, they may make a complaint to the Office of the Australian 
Information Commissioner (OAIC).”

https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2020/05/09/big-data-car-insurance/

-- 
David Boxall                    |  Drink no longer water,
                                |  but use a little wine
http://david.boxall.id.au       |  for thy stomach's sake ...
                                |            King James Bible
                                |              1 Timothy 5:23