

TomTom Sold User Data to Police, Motorists Then Targeted With Speed Traps - thehigherlife
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2011/04/back-fire-tomtom-sold-user-data-to-police-motorists-then-targeted-with-speed-traps.html

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bpodgursky
This was on reddit a week or so ago. I thought the top comment on the article
there explained it reasonably, so I'm just going to quote it here:

"Here's the situation:

-TomTom, when you first set your GPS up, asks you if you want anonymous time/location travel data to be sent to TomTom. You can say no if you want. This has been going on for years.

-TomTom sends this anonymous data to authorities and governments with the idea that it will help them know where to build new/better roads etc. This has been going on for years.

-TomTom finds out that Dutch police are using this data to set up speed traps. TomTom, as a courtesy, lets everyone know what the Dutch police are doing, while they decide what to do about it.

And somehow the headline we get paints TomTom as evil jerks for this? They are
the ones who let you know about what Dutch police are doing. This is a press
release that they issued. They are warning you."

~~~
alanfalcon
The problem as I understand it is that TomTom didn't give the data as a
courtesy, they sold the data. Sure, it's good that they've been transparent
when they found out about what the Dutch Police were doing, but I don't think
it was clear that they would sell your data to government agencies.

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guptaneil
Was this data only sold to Dutch police or to US police departments as well?
The article is not very clear on this, but mentions Dutch police specifically.
Regardless, California drivers beware, police have been really cracking down
hard on speeding since last month.

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Anechoic
> _Was this data only sold to Dutch police or to US police departments as
> well?_

If the data was sold to US police departments, things could play out very
differently. Highways under MUTCD jurisdiction (basically any roadway
receiving FHWA funds) are supposed to set speed limits according to prevailing
traffic conditions (specifically the 85th percentile speed, see
[http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009/part2/part2b.htm#section2...](http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009/part2/part2b.htm#section2B13)
).

A lot of times speed limits are set by statute with no engineering studies
behind them to justify the limit. If the Tom Tom data point out that traffic
is exceeding the speed limit at a location, that would be evidence that the
posted limit is actually too low and the limit should be _increased_.

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khafra
It's disturbing how seldom local jurisdictions follow the MUTCD. Just in case
one does, though, I'm sometimes tempted to pull over next to those black-
hoses-across-the-roadway speed measurement devices and spoof a lot of
extremely fast traffic with a pair of hammers or something.

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stretchwithme
I'm not worried. I own a TomTom and know how bad their data is.

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drivebyacct2
We read about this last week did we not?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2491729>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2490690>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2497611>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2494170>

Etc.

~~~
gcb
right. let me search before i submit...

/sarcasms :)

