Beyond Big Brother: Are car manufacturers invading your privacy to sell you more of everything?
What’s the benefit of hearing me complain about my kids or hope those towels are still on sale? Well, if your vehicle overlords know where you’re going — and they do, thanks to what you’ve entered into your nav system — they can helpfully offer you up a coupon code, or alert you to a sale on sheets while you’re scoring the towels. Take the bait, they’ll know they have one on the line and start chumming the waters. Think about it: if your passenger mentions they’re hungry, and you have the typical “I dunno, where do you wanna eat?” conversation, the car comes to the rescue with restaurants in the area it already knows you prefer. Because it’s been listening to you for years.
I am now at the point where I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had creepy phantom ads because of Facebook. Phone in your pocket, conversation with a friend about pool tables, and in an hour you’re getting ads about pool tables. It didn’t stop until I no longer had Facebook on my phone. It’s why I have almost no apps on my phone — a futility I fully recognize.
What if you aren’t interested in specific ads?
The Ford patent is more of the same. Sigh. It would know if you’re in heavy traffic or bad weather (all those sensors and cameras to the rescue!), and helpfully deliver your ads in audio or visual format, whichever would be sure to not interfere with your driving ability but while also not missing a shoutout from your favourite burrito joint. As MotorTrend notes, “hate the ads? The system can infer based on how you react … do you click the ‘get a promo code’ button on the screen? That’s a positive interaction. Do you voice your displeasure out loud? The system is listening, and jots that down.” Forgive me for detesting even polite surveillance.
When insurance companies let people volunteer to have their information recorded and shared in exchange for lower rates, it began an era of realization there was money to be made from not just selling a vehicle, but from monetizing that information. Initially, we were told it was stripped of identifiers and put into silos; we could just have a snapshot of anonymous driving habits and commute times.
Ha.
Back in 2014, Ford filed for a patent that would turn your spare tire into an electric unicycle. You read that right. The details from the patent as reported at Patent Yogiare awesome. “A driver travels to…an urban setting congested by commuters… the driver disengages the unicycle using a control available in the car…The self-powered Unicycle is also disengaged automatically. Unicycle includes all essentials like a battery, an electric motor, a seat and footrests. Driver then mounts the unicycle and drives to office.”
I’d rather have a unicycle under my butt than a spy in the backseat.
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