Ford Wants To Target You With Ads By Listening In On Your Conversations…. WTF?
My wife and I a few years ago said that we would drive our car into the ground because modern cars seem to want to invade your privacy in so many ways. And according to MalwareBytes Labs, Ford has taken this next level. Here’s how:
Car manufacturer Ford Motor Company has filed a patent application for an in-vehicle advertisement presentation system based on information derived from several trip and driver characteristics. Among those characteristics—human conversations.
In the abstract of the patent application publication Ford writes:
“An example method includes determining vehicle information for a trip, the vehicle information including any one or more of a current vehicle location, a vehicle speed, a drive mode, and/or traffic information, the user information including any one or more of a route prediction, a speed prediction for the trip, and/or a destination, determining user preferences for advertisements from any one or more of audio signals within the vehicle and/or historical user data, selecting a number of the advertisements to present to the user during the trip, and providing the advertisements to the user during the trip through a human-machine interface (HMI) of the vehicle.”
Further one it details that “the controller may monitor user dialogue to detect when individuals are in a conversation.”
Based on this info, the controller can decrease or increase the number of advertisements. And “the conversations can be parsed for keywords or phrases that may indicate where the occupants are travelling to.”
If Ford wanted to incentivize me to not ever consider buying their cars, this would be a great way to do it because I don’t want a third party listening in on my conversations…. Ever. Now to be clear, there’s no evidence that this has been implemented in any car that they sell. But the fact that they came up with this and are filing a patent for it is downright scary.
That’s not the only patent that they’ve filed lately:
Another controversial Ford patent filed in July described technology that would enable vehicles to monitor the speed of nearby cars, photograph them and send the information to police.
So based on that sentence, your car will snitch on other cars to the 5-0 as gangster rappers would say. While I will call the police if I see an impaired driver, or a dangerous driver, I am not at all comfortable with my car doing that by default.
So what does Ford have to say about that?
In a statement to Fortune, the company clarified that filing a patent is a standard practice to explore new ideas and doesn’t necessarily indicate immediate plans to release such a system.
That’s likely true. But the fact that they are even thinking about stuff like this and trying to patent it is just creepy. And while I am picking on Ford in this story, it’s a safe bet that other car companies are doing something similar. So perhaps before you sign the lease or finance deal for your next car, perhaps you should read the car’s privacy policy in detail to make sure that this car isn’t doing something that you’re not comfortable with.
September 27, 2024 at 10:40 am
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