Auto Companies are Spying on You

“The Washington Post hacked into a Chevy Volt several days ago with the help of a automotive technology expert to find out just how much automakers are spying on their owners and discovered that vehicles are recording their owners’ every move. The Post used a 2017 Chevy Volt for its experiment and learned that the car collected a wide range of highly precise data ranging from the vehicles location to information about the driver’s cell phone, including call records--noting that many vehicles copy over personal data the moment that a smart phone is plugged into the vehicle. The Post went to Jim Mason, who has a PhD in engineering and reconstructs car accidents for a living by hacking into vehicles, for help hacking into the Chevy Volt. The Post found that Chevy collected the following information: ‘There on a map was the precise location where I’d driven to take apart the Chevy. There were my other destinations, like the hardware store I’d stopped at to buy some tape. Among the trove of data points were a detailed log of phone calls from the previous week. There was a long list of contacts, right down to people’s address, emails and even photos. For a broader view, Mason also extracted the data from a Chevrolet infotainment computer that I bought used on eBay for $375. It contained enough data to reconstruct the Upstate New York travels and relationships of a total stranger. We know he or she frequently called someone listed as Sweetie, whose photo we also have. We could see the exact Gulf station where they bought gas, the restaurant where they ate (called Taste China) and the unique identifiers for their Samsung Galaxy Note phones.’”

“Washington Post Hacks into Chevy,” The Daily Wire, Dec. 26, 2019

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