The Ford Privacy Promise: You're in Control of Your Data
fromtheroad.ford.com
fromtheroad.ford.com
Vehicle Data Sharing appears to be opt-out, not opt-in. They do say "If you’d like to ensure you’re not sharing data, check Vehicle Connectivity in your Settings menu in-vehicle and toggle it off." After doing that, someone should check to see if the wireless modem is still emitting.
[1] https://www.ford.com/data-and-privacy/manage-your-settings/c...
Error codes for faults and nothing else are enough.
Super creepy.
It'd be lovely if other automakers followed suit, but I wouldn't actually bet on Ford keeping its Promise.
No, our data is barely even safe with ourselves. It's definitely not safe with anyone else!
Will you sign a legal statement to that effect?
Yeah, didn't think so.
First thing it told me when I was setting up the customization area was something around ...if you enable BMW account sync, this car will transmit all audio, video and any other data recorded to BMW for its use blah blah...
Ugh
So the right answer is to leave the data collection mechanisms entirely disabled until the customer enables a feature that requires it, enable only the data collection mechanisms required by that feature, and disable them again -and purge all data collected by them- when the feature is disabled.
The physical modules that collect this data and transmit this data should be easily removable by the customer, for those who know that they will never want those features to be provided by their car.
The odds that this is what Ford is doing -at least in the US- are 0%.
Features that require the data to be available to Ford, please.
To have a car that "moves down the road and brakes" only, you'd have to go back to cars of the 90s, minimum. Which at the very least you can't do with all the added automotive regulations that have been added since then (which I agree with eliminating btw, but one has to wade through all the FUD that the environmental lobby will pump out, that too many believe have helped).
Then maybe, just maybe, we could sell new kei trucks, etc here in the US again.
How much is the first 3 years of maintenance worth?
The answer to this question is simply "money". Ford uses your data for money.
Its nice knowing the doors are actually locked when you issue a remote unlock and then lock command when a friend is trying to grab something and you didn't want to handle the logistics of them getting to you to get the keys to get to the car and then back to you. Or making sure you really did lock it when you walked away.
It's nice knowing the state of charge while the car is on the charger and get that data somewhat live while it's charging and you're in a restaurant or whatever.
It's nice having the last known location on a map when you're trying to find the car in a maze of a parking lot and it turns out it wasn't parked in lot H row 72 like you thought you remembered.
It's nice starting the AC or heat well before you get to the car and are far out of range of the key remote.
There's a lot of telemetry that's kind of nice to have, assuming you can have control over it and who it's shared with. It's not nice having it shared without your consent and potentially used against you.
But yes, generally speaking and replying to your original question of "requires telemetry to remotely access certain features on their car", yes it takes some kind of access to telemetry data to access telemetry data. The whole feature is access to telemetry data in the end, presented in useful ways. Whether Ford uses some kind of homomorphic encryption to handle that data or sets up end to end encryption between your phone and the data receiver from the car or allows you to configure third party telemetry retrieval services is a whole different question to ask.
It was a terrible experience compared to being able to issue the command from anywhere. I can be in the middle of a shopping mall and start having the car cool down well before I get there, while before I'd practically have to already be on the right floor of the parking garage.
BTW, many of those features were available over 433MHz radio well before cars were connected to the internet. Some have even had better usability:
The "find car" would sound the horn or blink the lights. This new phone app solution requires you to pull out the phone instead of the car key, turn on gps, wait for a fix (imagine that in an underground parking!), turn on data, get car position (which might be wrong for the same weak gps reasons), figure out how to get to it on a tiny map... etc.
And as I've said before here many times, it usually had really shitty range making those features nearly useless. It's not the same. If you have to be within like a 15 second walk (if even that far), remote start is practically worthless by comparison. It takes at least a few minutes to really start cooling down or warming up a car. And having such a limited range to just hope you hear the lock honk/beep isn't nearly as useful to find a car rather than just seeing it's position on a map.
As someone who lives in a place where we get months of 100F+ days having reliable long range remote start is a killer feature. I don't think I'd bother buying a car today without that feature.
> This new phone app solution requires you to pull out the phone instead of the car key
Well, I don't normally carry a car key as I just usey phone for that these days...so...about that...
> turn on gps, wait for a fix (imagine that in an underground parking!)
Have you never used a device with AGPS or a modern smartphone generally? I can't remember having to seriously wait for a GPS fix, and it can find location from things like cellular and WiFi networks. My experience is almost always just open the app, tap vehicle location, and boom practically instantly there's a map with the last known location of my car. There isn't any waiting.
It is literally one of the few specific questions they address:
"Does Ford sell customer data about your personal vehicle's driving behavior to data brokers or insurance companies?" And their answer was one word.
Ah, so they're selling the data in aggregate.
Q: "Does Ford sell customer data about your personal vehicle's driving behavior to data brokers or insurance companies?"
A: No
Again: I don't know how much I trust them, and when I get a new car I'll probably be doing some research to see which ones will still run after I physically disconnect the wireless modem, but they DO answer that question
My qualm with all this is that the Q/A changes substantially if you swap “sell” to “sell or otherwise provide”.
Do they have contracts in place with every single entity they provide your personal data to, regardless of context, that they are not allowed to sell/exchange/give away said personal data to data brokers or insurance companies and that such an agreement must be made with any and every company that, in turn, acquires this data?
Oh! And lets not forget the ever-important derivative information.
Information derived from your personal information that Ford or any other car manufacturer collects that can still identify you should also be off the table for ever getting in the hands of data brokers or insurance companies under any context.