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Speaker 1: You will have heard this on five double A News

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Speaker 1: throughout the morning. A Choice investigation into Australia's ten most

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Speaker 1: popular car brands has had a look at which companies

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Speaker 1: are tracking and monitoring drivers Your car spying on you.

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Speaker 1: Choice is discovered that Kia, Hyundai, and Tesla the worst

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Speaker 1: offenders when it came to protecting the privacy of their customers.

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Speaker 1: Ke and Hyundai both collect and share voice recognition data

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Speaker 1: with third parties, along with other information. Tesla takes it

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Speaker 1: one step further, collecting short video clips and images captured

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Speaker 1: from the camera in the vehicle and sharing some of

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Speaker 1: that data with third parties. Your car is spying on you,

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Speaker 1: Johnny Blackhali is with Choice and joins me. Now go

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Speaker 1: Johnny Hi. So this is a little worrying. So out

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Speaker 1: of the ten car brands you test, did and I

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Speaker 1: mentioned the others if I've got it right here, Tesla, Mazda, Kia,

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Speaker 1: ford Is, Suzuhi, Suzu, Mitsubishi, Hundai, MG, Toyota and Subaru,

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Speaker 1: and seven out of the ten collecting and sharing some

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Speaker 1: level of driving data. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So we wrote to the companies and we analyzed their

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Speaker 2: privacy policies that were available online and essentially, as you mentioned,

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Speaker 2: seven out of the ten did had some level of

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Speaker 2: data tracking and sharing that we considered concerning. And then, yeah,

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Speaker 2: the three worst performers when it came to data privacy

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Speaker 2: and protection was a Kia, Home and Tesla.

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Speaker 1: So we must give them the right when we buy

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Speaker 1: the car to do this, I imagine.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So essentially, yeah, essentially, when you purchased the vehicle

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Speaker 2: or when you download the vehicles app, you're opting in

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Speaker 2: to this wide range of data collection. But these policies

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Speaker 2: hidden in privacy policies that are sometimes five thousands, sometimes

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Speaker 2: ten thousand words long, and we think most customers don't

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Speaker 2: really understand what's going on, and they shouldn't automatically be

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Speaker 2: opted in simply by purchasing a vehicle.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I recall, must be a year or so. There

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Speaker 1: was a fellow who bought a Toyoda and went to court,

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Speaker 1: as I understand, because once he realized they were taking

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Speaker 1: his data. You know, when you buy the car, you've

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Speaker 1: got to put your details into the the computer system,

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Speaker 1: the car's computer system, to use the screen and everything else,

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Speaker 1: and to pee your phone and everything with it, and

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Speaker 1: that was it. He was in He didn't want to be,

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Speaker 1: and he went to court. I don't know where that

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Speaker 1: ended up or whether you know that, but I imagine

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Speaker 1: there'd be some cases like this now as a result

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Speaker 1: of this information.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, we think that a lot of customers, you know,

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Speaker 2: aren't aware of what's going on, and the companies aren't

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Speaker 2: really being upfront these As I said, the policies are

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Speaker 2: incredibly long, they use incredibly complex police jargon that you know,

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Speaker 2: I've spent hours analyzing these policies, and you know, some.

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Speaker 3: Like Mazda, for example, say they collect voice consumption data,

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Speaker 3: but they're nowhere to provide an explanation to what voice

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Speaker 3: consumption means. And I don't know what that term means,

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Speaker 3: and I don't think the average consumer would either.

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Speaker 1: Is it possible to opt out in buying a car?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so all the companies were keen to point out

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Speaker 2: that they do have opt out systems, but these sometimes

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Speaker 2: involve you writing emails to the headquarters or filling in

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Speaker 2: complex online forms. And we think, really the customers shouldn't

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Speaker 2: be automatically opted in and then be required to jump

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Speaker 2: through a number of hoops to opt out. Really the

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Speaker 2: owners should be the other way around, and you know,

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Speaker 2: if customers do want to opt into this, they should

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Speaker 2: be able to, but it shouldn't be a given for

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Speaker 2: these companies.

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Speaker 1: In fact, you've even mentioned, I think in the article

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Speaker 1: I've just spotted it, the Queensland man's battle with toy Yoda.

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Speaker 1: The dealership refused to give him a full refund after

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Speaker 1: he decided the tracking feature weren't what he liked and

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Speaker 1: wanted to not buy the car, and then he took

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Speaker 1: the company to court for not giving him a refund.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well we after we wrote that article, Toyota did

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Speaker 2: end up giving him a refund, So maybe the PR

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Speaker 2: department had a bit to do with that. I'm not sure,

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Speaker 2: but yeah, we think that people really really need to

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Speaker 2: be upfront when purchasing a vehicle. These companies really need

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Speaker 2: to be more transparent and honest with their customers.

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Speaker 1: All right. Which are the companies that don't spy on

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Speaker 1: their owners?

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Speaker 2: So we found that Subaru, Mitsu, Isshi and Issuzu the

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Speaker 2: three companies that in the Australian market that don't have

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Speaker 2: these connective beaches where they're tracking large amounts of data

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Speaker 2: from their drivers and sending it back to the headquarters.

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Speaker 1: The videos are concerning, aren't they So Mazda obviously, oh

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Speaker 1: that was a voice thing, wasn't it. But Tesla with

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Speaker 1: the videos. Let's so worry because we don't know where

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Speaker 1: this ends up.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So there was a a case that was actually

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Speaker 2: highlighted in the US media. I think it was around

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Speaker 2: a year and a half or almost two years ago

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Speaker 2: now where Tesla employees were sharing amongst themselves as a

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Speaker 2: bit of a joke images of drivers naked in their

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Speaker 2: vehicles or you know, doing different things in their vehicles,

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Speaker 2: things that would be incredibly private. So it's concerning that

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Speaker 2: these vehicles are capturing images and video and sending it

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Speaker 2: back to Tesla, and then Tesla's pivacy policy is incredibly

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Speaker 2: vague about what they do with that with that information,

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Speaker 2: all right.

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Speaker 1: So when they talk about on selling to third parties,

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Speaker 1: who is that? Who are they selling to?

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Speaker 2: SOI, Hyundai and Kia for example? They collect your voice

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Speaker 2: consumption I'm sorry, your voice recognition data. So when you

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Speaker 2: tell the car, you know, driving home or whatever, they're

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Speaker 2: collecting that data, which is a unique biometric identify It's

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Speaker 2: similar to a fingerprint or a facial recognition scan. And

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Speaker 2: then not only are they passing it back to the

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Speaker 2: main headquarters. They're then selling that to an AI software

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Speaker 2: training company that trains AI voices and AI software in

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Speaker 2: the US. So that's one example of this kind of

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Speaker 2: selling to third parties that we considered quite concerning, and

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Speaker 2: we think the average driver of these vehicles wouldn't really

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Speaker 2: know what's happening and wouldn't really condemn to it if

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Speaker 2: they were given the choice.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So what needs to change is a privacy legislation

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Speaker 1: that's needed to be brought into speed here or at

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Speaker 1: least updated to deal with this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So Australia's Privacy Act is incredibly out of date.

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Speaker 2: It was last updated in the nineteen eighties, I believe,

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Speaker 2: and the government has committed to updating it, but we

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Speaker 2: think what they've proposed doesn't go far enough and there

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Speaker 2: needs to be more stronger guardrails. I mean, it doesn't

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Speaker 2: have to be this way. In the European Union, for example,

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Speaker 2: there's incredibly strong data protection laws, and we see that

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Speaker 2: the car companies have changed their software and changed the

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Speaker 2: way data and shares data when they sell cars into

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Speaker 2: the European market because they have to comply with those

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Speaker 2: stronger regulations. So we could have that here and we

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Speaker 2: could have much stronger protections for Australian drivers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, that's what's needed. So you love being the

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Speaker 1: government in that regard.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly. We've delivered a petition to the government about

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Speaker 2: increasing privacy reforms and making a stronger Privacy Act and yeah,

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Speaker 2: we're continuing to bring cases like this to the public's attention.

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Speaker 1: Johnny, appreciate your time, Thank you, no worry, thank you

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Speaker 1: Man from Choice, Johnny blackli on cars spying on their

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Speaker 1: owners and sending the data back to the parent company

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Speaker 1: who knew