Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not one to keep most of his life a secret.
An entrepreneur shares his innermost thoughts with the world on Twitter, the social network he bought last year, about everything from politics to his family to nightlife.
But even tech billionaire has secrets. And his own car shares them with the world.
Sometime in 2020, a group of Tesla employees stumbled upon and shared a video of a unique white Lotus Esprit sitting quietly in Musk's garage.
The footage caused a stir online.
The car with unique fins instead of wheels, better known as James Bond's whip in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me, was a Hollywood star and hadn't been seen in public for nearly a decade.But it turns out that Tesla employees were able to see not only “Wet Nellie,” as the submarine car is called.
Elon Musk's garage show that the tech mogul bought James Bond's «Wet Nellie» car. Photo: Sotheby's/Handout via REUTERS
According to a Reuters investigation, Mr. Musk is one of potentially thousands of Tesla owners whose cars have been unwittingly filmed over the years, including one man unwittingly filmed in the nude as he went to get something from a parked car
As the world realizes exactly what Tesla's on-board cameras can capture and relay to their creators, a broader fear has arisen: Is your car spying on you?
Systems such as telematics «black boxes» that capture the location of a vehicle and how it is being driven are commonplace today. Complaints about how this data is being shared with Big Brother seem old-fashioned.
However, these concerns are growing.
Society of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) data shows that the top-selling 2023 Cars of the Year are now models equipped with the latest in-flight infotainment and remote diagnostic technologies.
From the Model Y Tesla to the humble Mini, there are close to two million of these data-cars registered in the UK over the past five years.
McKinsey estimates that by 2030, 95% of new cars will have built-in automatic data connectivity .
Companies such as SiriusXM, Harman International, Bosch, IBM, and even the American telecommunications network Verizon offer products and services. for the increasingly lucrative automotive telematics market.
«It's a complete mess: the car companies and Google understand this information and who 'owns' customer data,» says Ken Tindell, CTO of Canis Automotive Labs, an automotive data security company.
Fortune Business Insights research predicts that the telematics market will be worth $213bn (£170bn) by 2029, easily explaining why so many companies struggle to collect and process connected car data.
The pressing question is this. not so much «is your car spying on you?» as «which bidder?» however.
Data generated by your car is valuable because it does more than just show you what you and your engine are doing , but can also be used to create products and services that can encourage drivers to buy.
This week Ford launched the BlueCruise system of its Mustang Mach-E in the UK. For £17.99 a month, a camera monitors the driver to make sure they keep their eyes on the road while computers do the hard work of keeping lanes on motorways.
Ford says “ is committed to protecting customer privacy, transparency, and obtaining proper consent for the collection and use of all customer data,” adding that speed and location data is collected from connected vehicles using BlueCruise.
Ford Hands Free System
The built-in cellular modem (actually a miniature mobile phone) transmits your data back to Ford and its «third party service providers».
Ken Munro, CEO of Pen Test Partners, a cybersecurity company that specializes in troubleshooting problems with systems connected to the Internet, says manufacturers use this type of information to «improve the product.»
«This data is incredibly valuable, and I think insurance companies would like to have access to it,» he adds.
The data generated by the vehicle's on-board sensors—from speed to airbag deployment—is typically transmitted from the vehicle to the Vehicle Data Hub (VDH), an Internet service run by a technology company.
IBM is one such company, and her website explains what she does with the information she collects. out of the car.
“When VDH receives data from connected vehicles, it is normalized and then integrated with asset information such as vehicle or driver data,” says IBM.
“From VDH, vehicle data is transmitted then passed on to other components such as contextual mapping and driver behavior.»
Suggested examples of products that can be built from this data include vehicle «geofencing», which means programming a piece of software to send an alert if The vehicle's GPS location is outside the defined location.
Another uses «Most Likely Path & Destination Prediction feature that allows fleet managers to predict a particular vehicle's future route and likely destination.
If that sounds a bit Orwellian, you're probably not alone wondering how this guy information could lead to something undesirable happening.
Munroe tells stories about what his company discovered while investigating the computer networks of an automaker at her request.
“The manufacturer brought in a third-party telematics provider, and that telematics provider didn’t separate the customers,” says Munroe, explaining that a simple computer security bug with the telematics provider meant that his team not only could view data from every other vehicle from that manufacturer, «but we could also see other, third party brands on the same platform.»
Look behind the digital curtains of one car and suddenly you see tens of thousands of other cars. Munro declines to name names, saying the research was conducted under a strict non-disclosure agreement.
“I was impressed with the response from the auto industry,” he says. “Therefore, for new transport platforms, the architecture is thought out from a logical point of view, and a lot of work has been done to ensure safety.”
Cybersecurity researchers have been hacking into connected cars, with the most notorious incident occurring in 2015 when a reporter's jeep was remotely stopped on a US highway during a proof of concept.
The data collected by your connected car can also be shared with the police.
Rachel Medhurst, Senior Lecturer in Digital Forensics at the University of South Wales, says the data stored in vehicles and VDH providers can be useful for crash investigators.
Medhurst says that while investigating the hit-and-run incident, investigators found that the car was recording its precise GPS location, meaning «they can locate that car at that place and time.»
» During this time, they could see that [the people in the car] were actually playing with the infotainment system and that the buttons were pressed,” she adds.
These systems, including radios and satellite navigators, can be linked to mobile phones, Medhurst said, which could provide police with a wealth of data to investigate. which the data collected from British cars is cut, shredded and sold.
Mike Howes, Chief Executive of SMMT, says: “The UK automotive industry takes privacy and data protection very seriously and customer consent is at the heart of all processing of personal data.
“Manufacturers will only process relevant personal data and store only as long as necessary.
“Personal data, including apps and mobile phones associated with the infotainment system. , can be removed from vehicles according to individual manufacturer instructions, giving motorists control over the privacy of their data.”
Ultimately, it's a question of trust.
The industry wants drivers to think of their cars as reliable traveling companions who know where you're going and are looking out for you.
Others may wonder who's really driving on horseback — or who& #39;s interrogate him quietly after you've parked safely at home.
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