Sometimes I feel bad for repeating myself but relevant threads keep appearing.
Mazda won't permit me to use remote start because I refused to install their app and enable connected services. The man I worked with on the lease was extraordinarily aggressive with me. Almost demanding I install and register this app to complete lease agreement.
So now I don't have remote start and every time I turn the car on I have to select cancel on an infotainment prompt asking me to enable connected services.
The TOS specifically says driving data will be sold to 3rd parties including law enforcement and insurance companies.
I never installed the app and I was asked to by the leasing guy though he wasn't pushy about it - for whatever reason, the lease/sales guys are incented to have it installed though, allegedly, mazda corporate says they don't incent them - I don't trust it
also, allegedly, since I didn't install it, mazda says my TPU is disabled which is fine by me - remote start is less important than saying many thousands of dollars on bogus insurance hikes
I didn't work for Mazda, but I did work for a large auto manufacturer, and I can tell you we did incentivize dealers to complete sign up for connected services for the reasons most of you would probably expect.
We wanted to collect your data to sell it, utilize it for maintenance, or for general product improvement. I.e. wanted it so we could make or save money. No surprise there I hope.
The dealer incentive was literally a payment when a customer signs up because the money we'd make with customer data outweighs the dealer kickback.
Renters of cars. Was that not clear from the context? Question was whether data collection and loss of privacy on rental cars should be expected by renters of cars.
Oh, so why did you ask ‘renters of what?’ and start talking about home rental?
Well, I think it’s unrealistic to not expect car rentals to track their cars. Renting gardening tools might be a different story. However, SASS subscriptions are software rentals, and GDPR makes it explicitly illegal to track what the software companies rent to EU citizens without consent.
To me it seems like the question in practice is not renting vs buying, it’s about what information is collected, what they’re allowed to do with it, and who it is sent to.
Car rentals could request or require consent as terms of rental. (They probably do, I can admit to never having read the entire contract.) One underlying issue here is whether the car rental company passes your name or identification on to the manufacturer, law enforcement, or service providers. It does seem like they should not have the right to do that automatically without informed consent (not buried in contract legalese). They probably should have the right to track where their car is until it’s returned, and then delete that data. So all depends on what they do with the data.
> Oh, so why did you ask ‘renters of what?’ and start talking about home rental?
Have people completely lost their reading comprehension? My comment:
> Renters of what? Items people can just take and leave with [...]
A car is a item "people can just take and leave with". I literally answer the question myself, right after stating it. And not until the line below I start talking about expecting privacy in a rented home.
> Car rentals could request or require consent as terms of rental
They very much do, at least in the countries I've rented a car in. Every time they asked for consent, like the regulations require them to in my region.
Mazda won't permit me to use remote start because I refused to install their app and enable connected services. The man I worked with on the lease was extraordinarily aggressive with me. Almost demanding I install and register this app to complete lease agreement.
So now I don't have remote start and every time I turn the car on I have to select cancel on an infotainment prompt asking me to enable connected services.
The TOS specifically says driving data will be sold to 3rd parties including law enforcement and insurance companies.