If you want to be creeped out and you’re a Ford owner (though owners of other cars should not feel snug for reasons I will get to in a bit), then read on.
Ford VP Jim Farley during a panel discussion on privacy at CES was trying to illustrate that Ford had a ton of data on it’s customers and they use very little of it in order to avoid raising privacy concerns. That’s when he said this:
“We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing. By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,”
Well, that sounds a wee bit sinister does it not? He must have figured that out on his own or when a Ford PR person told him about the impression that he left. That’s when he said this:
“I absolutely left the wrong impression about how Ford operates. We do not track our customers in their cars without their approval or consent.”
Ford later clarified his position further by saying that GPS units in Ford cars are not “routinely” reporting their whereabouts as car owners drive around. I put the word routinely in quotes because that implies that they either do phone home infrequently or are capable of doing so and Ford chooses not to enable that feature. And why would cars be capable of phoning home? How about to sell your driving patterns to third parties for a handsome profit for example? TomTom got caught doing that a while ago. So there’s no reason why others aren’t doing something similar.
Now some of you reading this are going to say “Hey, I never consented to Ford collecting all this data.” Well, actually you likely did and didn’t know it. It might have been buried in the license agreement for My Ford Touch, in the legalese that pops up on the screen every time the car starts up, or in the paperwork that you signed when you bought the car. Perhaps someone would like to clarify exactly where that lies as I am sure that many would be very interested in that.
Now let me be clear. Ford is NOT sharing data with third parties, but clearly if they wanted to, they could. And seeing that similar systems exist in other cars, it is entirely possible that you can substitute Ford for some other car company and we’d be having a similar discussion. Thus it might be a very good thing if car companies came clean on if they collect data, and what they do with it. That would make us all feel better.
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This entry was posted on January 10, 2014 at 10:06 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Ford, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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#Fail: ‘We Know Everyone Who Breaks the Law’ Says Ford Exec
If you want to be creeped out and you’re a Ford owner (though owners of other cars should not feel snug for reasons I will get to in a bit), then read on.
Ford VP Jim Farley during a panel discussion on privacy at CES was trying to illustrate that Ford had a ton of data on it’s customers and they use very little of it in order to avoid raising privacy concerns. That’s when he said this:
“We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing. By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,”
Well, that sounds a wee bit sinister does it not? He must have figured that out on his own or when a Ford PR person told him about the impression that he left. That’s when he said this:
“I absolutely left the wrong impression about how Ford operates. We do not track our customers in their cars without their approval or consent.”
Ford later clarified his position further by saying that GPS units in Ford cars are not “routinely” reporting their whereabouts as car owners drive around. I put the word routinely in quotes because that implies that they either do phone home infrequently or are capable of doing so and Ford chooses not to enable that feature. And why would cars be capable of phoning home? How about to sell your driving patterns to third parties for a handsome profit for example? TomTom got caught doing that a while ago. So there’s no reason why others aren’t doing something similar.
Now some of you reading this are going to say “Hey, I never consented to Ford collecting all this data.” Well, actually you likely did and didn’t know it. It might have been buried in the license agreement for My Ford Touch, in the legalese that pops up on the screen every time the car starts up, or in the paperwork that you signed when you bought the car. Perhaps someone would like to clarify exactly where that lies as I am sure that many would be very interested in that.
Now let me be clear. Ford is NOT sharing data with third parties, but clearly if they wanted to, they could. And seeing that similar systems exist in other cars, it is entirely possible that you can substitute Ford for some other car company and we’d be having a similar discussion. Thus it might be a very good thing if car companies came clean on if they collect data, and what they do with it. That would make us all feel better.
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This entry was posted on January 10, 2014 at 10:06 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Ford, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.