Crazy invasion of PRIVACY: Is your car tracking your “genetic information” and “sexual activity?”

 It is a disturbing fact that smartphones, laptop computers, Amazon's always-listening "Alexa" devices, and various other "smart" tech creations often contain hidden technology that tracks users' behavior and speech, but did you know that some automobile manufacturers are incorporating the same spying apparatus in their cars?

Vehicular computers have become so advanced that some car companies are tracking consumers' "preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitudes" in order to sell that information to third parties.

In addition to tracking "predispositions," some "smart" cars also track users' "genetic information" and even "sexual activity." If someone gets it on in the back seat, for instance, the peeping Tom car company now knows about all the steamy details.

As vehicles become less user friendly – many new cars are next to impossible for the average person to repair – they are also becoming increasingly more technologically advanced. Many of them contain hidden backdoors, so to speak, that allow car companies to keep an all-seeing eye on drivers and passengers.

 

Nissan the "worst car company" for privacy, warns Mozilla

One particularly creepy offender in this regard is Nissan. Mozilla, an organization that reviews products and services that in some way connect to the internet, took a closer look under the hood of Nissan's privacy policy, which contains some seriously disturbing elements.

"We're not going to mince words here: THEY STINK AT PRIVACY!" Mozilla said about Nissan. "They are probably the worst car company we reviewed and that says something because all car companies are really bad at privacy."

Who knew that many people's favorite whip for getting to and from work, the grocery store and the gym is a very large spy device, in many cases, that watches and listens to everything that is said and done in and around the vehicle.

According to the Privacy Policy page over at the Nissan website, the company collects user details about pretty much everything, including:

"Sensitive personal information, including driver's license number, national or state identification number, citizenship status, immigration status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, sexual activity, precise geolocation, health diagnosis data and genetic information."

By and large, the automobile industry is the worst offender when it comes to maintaining user and customer privacy, according to Mozilla. All 25 of the companies reviewed, including Nissan, made it into the dumpster category of the organization's privacy rankings.

A shocking 84 percent of the brands looked at actively share and sell personal data collected from drivers, while more than half admit that they sell said data directly to the government and law enforcement whenever they receive an "informal request" for such information.

In 92 percent of cases, customers are also not allowed to request that their personal information be deleted or kept private, the only two exceptions being Renault and Dacia, both of which are owned by the Renault Group.

At the bottom of the list as the worst car companies for privacy are Nissan and Kia, both of which track users' sexual interactions, as well as their "genetic information" and "genetic characteristics."

"Like we mentioned, all of the cars we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label," Mozilla says about its research.

"All of the car brands we researched got our 'data use' and 'security' dings – and most earned dings for poor data control and bad track records too! We can't stress enough how bad and not normal this is for an entire product guide to earn warning labels."