When Mozilla published What Data Does Your Car Collect About You and Where Does It Go? in September 2023, the headline number was startling but the details were worse. Twenty-five car brands reviewed. Twenty-five rated as having "privacy problems." Twenty-one explicitly said they could sell your personal data. Nineteen said they could share it with government or law enforcement on simple request, no warrant required.
The category has only grown since. Modern cars are no longer mechanical objects with electronic accessories. They are mobile data-collection platforms that happen to provide transportation as a side effect — networked, GPS-enabled, often microphone-equipped, integrated with phone contacts and calendars, and connected to the manufacturer's servers continuously.
What modern connected cars actually collect
The specific data varies by manufacturer, model year, and trim. The categories below are present in some form across most connected vehicles sold since 2020:
- Location data, continuously. GPS coordinates, route history, frequent destinations, parked positions. Uploaded over the car's cellular modem to manufacturer servers.
- Driving behavior. Speed, acceleration, braking, steering inputs, time of day, distance, fuel/energy consumption. Used for insurance partnerships in some cases.
- Vehicle telemetry. Battery state, fault codes, tire pressure, ambient temperature, climate control settings.
- Phone-paired data. When you connect a phone via Bluetooth or USB, the car can ingest contacts, call logs, text-message metadata, and recently played media. Some manufacturers have been documented storing this data even after the phone is disconnected.
- Voice commands. When voice assistants are active, audio is processed locally or sent to cloud services depending on architecture. The microphone is physically present and addressable.
- In-cabin video, in some models. Driver monitoring cameras for attention/drowsiness detection (Tesla, Subaru, BMW, others) — generally retained on-vehicle but uploadable in fleet-management contexts.
- App and service interactions. Music apps, navigation apps, in-car payment systems, charging-station interactions for EVs.
Where the data goes
The data flows split roughly into four channels, all of which exist in varying degrees across manufacturers:
1. The manufacturer. Every connected vehicle uploads telemetry to its OEM's servers. This is the source flow. From there, the manufacturer's privacy policy governs what happens next — usually a broad authorization to use the data for product improvement, marketing, and "partner" sharing.
2. Third-party brokers. Many car companies have explicit data-broker relationships. LexisNexis and Verisk are two of the largest aggregators that have been documented receiving driving-behavior data from major manufacturers (notably GM, which was sued in 2024 over the practice in connection with insurance pricing).
3. Insurance companies. Direct partnerships between manufacturers and insurers, often opt-in but sometimes enabled by default during vehicle setup, share trip-level driving data for usage-based insurance products. In some cases this has resulted in dramatic premium increases for drivers who didn't realize they were enrolled.
4. Law enforcement. Vehicle location and telemetry data is regularly requested by law enforcement, often without a warrant. Tesla, GM, Ford, Toyota, and others have published transparency reports documenting volume of government data requests. The bar for compliance varies by manufacturer and jurisdiction.
In the U.S., the third-party doctrine generally allows law enforcement to obtain data that a user has voluntarily shared with a service provider — including, in many courts' interpretations, the data your car uploads to its manufacturer. The Carpenter v. United States (2018) Supreme Court ruling provides some protection for historical cell-site location data, but its application to other forms of vehicle telemetry remains contested.
Why the standard remedies don't work
For most other categories of digital privacy, there's at least a theoretical remedy: stop using the service, change the settings, switch providers. Cars don't accommodate this model well:
- Opt-out is often nominal. Mozilla's research found that opting out of data collection in car infotainment systems frequently disables core features (navigation, voice control, sometimes climate scheduling) while still leaving cellular telemetry uploads running.
- Switching brands rarely helps. When 25 of 25 reviewed brands fail privacy standards, "choose a more private manufacturer" is not a meaningful strategy.
- Older cars age out of support. Choosing a non-connected used car is one of the only effective options, but the available pool shrinks each year as cellular telemetry becomes standard in the bottom of the market.
- Physical disconnection is hostile. Pulling the cellular modem fuse or chip is sometimes possible but often disables safety features (automatic crash notification) and may void warranties or trigger persistent dashboard warnings.
The realistic harm reduction playbook
Despite the structural problems, there are practical steps that reduce exposure:
1. Don't pair your primary phone
The phone-paired data ingestion is one of the worst categories because it pulls in data from other ecosystems — your contacts, call history, text-message metadata. If you must use Bluetooth audio, use a phone that doesn't carry your full life — a secondary phone or a stripped-down profile.
2. Decline cellular features at setup
When activating a new car, the "connected services" enrollment screens are often opt-in but designed to encourage acceptance. Read carefully. Decline what you can. Be aware that some manufacturers will still upload basic telemetry even with "consumer services" disabled.
3. Review your manufacturer's data dashboard
Most major manufacturers now offer a privacy dashboard accessible via their app or web portal, often required by California's CCPA and similar state laws. Request a data export. The output is usually revealing about what's actually collected.
4. Opt out of insurance data sharing explicitly
If you have a GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Ford, or Acura vehicle, check whether OnStar Smart Driver, Honda Driver Feedback, or equivalent programs were enabled at activation. These programs have been the source of the largest documented harms (steeply increased insurance premiums based on undisclosed data sharing). Most can be disabled in the manufacturer's app.
5. Consider an older or aftermarket head unit
For users buying used cars, model years before approximately 2017-2018 generally lack persistent cellular connectivity. The connected-car generation that ramped up around 2018-2020 represents the inflection point. For new cars, this is no longer an available option in the volume market.
What needs to change
The car-data problem is regulatory, not technical. Manufacturers collect what they're allowed to collect, share what they're allowed to share, and the constraints in most jurisdictions are minimal. GDPR provides theoretical protection in the EU, but enforcement against car manufacturers has been limited. In the U.S., the patchwork of state privacy laws covers some vehicles in some states for some categories of data, but the baseline is "anything goes unless specifically prohibited."
For now, the realistic position is: assume the car is collecting and sharing more than you'd like, take the available harm-reduction steps, push for regulatory change where you can, and weight privacy properties when buying. Manufacturers that explicitly publish detailed data-collection policies and provide meaningful opt-outs deserve credit, even when those opt-outs are imperfect. The market has not yet rewarded privacy in the auto industry; until it does, the defaults will remain extractive.