Hacker News Reader

Comment by advisedwang | Hacker News Reader

I really have one big question about connected vehicle privacy: do you provide the data to insurance companies? This website is opaque enough that I can't even find the answer to that question. What a joke to be celebrating your privacy principles when that isn't even answerable.

View on HN

I'm not going to say I'm not suspicious, but the third bullet point under "Our Privacy Promise" says "We also never sell data about how you drive your vehicle to data brokers". Then further down the page we have the FAQs, which has:

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

They don’t sell. They might just make it available through some other arrangement though

Yes, like Google does it. If they sell it, the other party has a copy to keep and use. If they rent access charged per query they have an income stream.

Do they sell the information to another entity that, in turn, will sell it to insurance companies or data brokers?

That would be a data broker, so no, if we believe the text.

My qualm with all this is that the Q/A changes substantially if you swap “sell” to “sell or otherwise provide”.

When dealing with an industry and company that historically has trafficked heavily in deception and legal sleight-of-hand, this is not something that can simply be assumed.

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.

It's in one of the questions you have to open to see the answer to. The answer they is simply "No".

> do you provide the data to insurance companies? This website is opaque enough that I can't even find the answer to that question.

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.

And if you changed one word - from "Does" to "Will" - then it would be worth more than the almost nothing the current answer is worth.

> personal vehicle's driving behavior

Ah, so they're selling the data in aggregate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com