Your car is following you — how to reclaim data privacy

Modern vehicles are built with computers, sensors, satellite communications, mobile links and cloud services, so buying a newer model often means buying a rolling data platform as much as wheels and an engine. Those systems monitor vehicle health but can also collect information about the people inside.

Common components now include infotainment dashboards, satellite navigation and mapping (often using LiDAR), mobile-device synchronization, under‑the‑hood diagnostics, an array of sensors, onboard cameras, automatic emergency alerts and telematics or event data recorders installed for monitoring driving behaviour.

The range of information collected is broad: precise location and destinations, travel patterns broadcast by tire and other sensors, speed and braking data, audio commands, dashcam and cabin video, contact lists and phone logs synced over Bluetooth, seat‑occupancy and weight estimates, and even biometric or driver‑monitoring data such as facial expressions.

connected cars, vehicle data, telematics, infotainment, satellite navigation, lidar, event data, dashcam video, biometric data, location data