What Data Does Your Car Gather About You and Where Does It Go? This Tool Shows You

What if there was a way for you to determine whether your car is collecting data and sending it to a third party? It’s not an unreasonable or paranoid question to ask in our age of software-defined vehicles and connected cars. That’s the aim of Privacy4Cars’ new free privacy report service that gives owners a peek into what sort of data is harvested from their cars, how it’s used, and who it’s sent to. As reported by Vice’s Motherboard, Privacy4Cars generates a sort of window sticker, like the one you get with your new car outlining its features, fuel economy, pricing, and more, but for data use.

It’s not perfect, as the sticker generated is mostly based on publicly available data policy papers from your car’s maker. We tried two different VINs, one for this author’s 1995 Mercedes-Benz station wagon and another for MotorTrend‘s long-term 2023 Genesis G90 test car.

You can probably guess which of these two cars, separated by decades, would generate a more foreboding data report, but confusingly, they were roughly the same. Again, this has more to do with the general policies of Mercedes-Benz and Genesis than with how those policies might apply to specific cars’ onboard equipment or computing abilities.

This author’s old Benz doesn’t even have an OBD port—it uses an analog onboard diagnostic system, and is hardly “connected” in any modern sense of the term, though at some point it did have a built-in car phone. The Genesis, on the other hand, is fully connected, with an attendant smartphone app capable of remote starting, locking, diagnostics, and more. It would make more sense for the Privacy4Cars tool to be searchable by make, rather than VIN, as the information provided is more brand-wide, as we’ve noted.

So, what can you expect when plugging your VIN into Privacy4Cars? And how might it help you? Simple: the tool shows what types of data are harvested and whether or not the car has telematics (a built-in data connection), biometrics, location tracking, personal data identifiers, or phone syncing. The tool also then shows who or what your car’s maker might share that information with (affiliates, service providers, insurers, data brokers, or even the government).

While the tool told us a 1995 Mercedes E320 includes biometrics—doubtful, as it doesn’t even have remote locking—and location sharing, it’s actually telling us Mercedes generally has those capabilities today. And Privacy4Cars will even show you the evidence in the form of each company’s policy papers on the subject. So, curious if what data your car is snagging from you, and where it might be going? Go take a look for yourself, and be sure to check out Privacy4Cars’ instructions on how to delete your data from a vehicle before selling it and how to assert control over some of your data.