Joan of Arc & Maid of Orleans
When the cute car rental clerk on the ever so-friendly rental counter smiles and says, “You will be pleased to know your car has the latest infotainment center,” beware. These devices are not only anonymously storing your driving habits. Their hands-free phone apps are also snooping on you personally, and filing your phone numbers, call logs, location history, and garage door codes away.
Why Should I Have to Pay to Recover What is Actually Mine?
In theory of course, as the cute car rental clerk may say, “You can easily delete this data using the instructions in the car manual in the glove box.” Try replying, “But, did you ever try personally to actually to do that yourself? “Why should I have to pay a service provider to recover what is actually mine?’
Europe is a strange place where good friends Europe and Britain are quarreling over a divorce neither party’s citizens really want. However, their General Data Protection Act - AKA GDPR - has at least alerted us to a supplier’s duty to protect customer data. We would dearly love to know from car rental giants:
# Where they store the information concerning our personal driving and other information
# What steps they are taking to delete our information from their vehicles before rehiring them
# Which anonymization methods they are using to de-link our personal information from our identities
# What assurance can they give they are not selling our personal information on to third parties
There is a fat hope that any of this is happening of course. Especially in America where corporates make big waves. “I am awfully sorry for any inconvenience, but the rental agreement does require you to familiarize yourself with the vehicle before driving away,” the clerk says as they brush away their crocodile tears.
Help, We Need a Knight in Shining Armor to Save Us
Indeed we do, and Auto Rental News just provided the heads up we share here today. A company that calls itself Privacy4Cars is currently giving away a countermeasures app that works on iOS and Android devices.
Their method with pending trademark apparently allows users to, “Quickly erase personal information such as phone numbers, call logs, location history, and garage door codes from vehicle infotainment systems.” All they need do is download the app, select their make from several hundred choices, punch a few buttons, and relax while a bot apparently does the rest.
You may like to try this on an old phone first before risking your latest. We believe the product is trustworthy. However, it is always best to be careful with anything to do with the rental car industry, just in case the software does more than it should. This information comes to you with complements of Bonzah, the rental car insurance specialists where you come first.
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