New features on cars and phone apps can track where you go, when and how fast—among many other things. Here’s what to do about it.
3 min
Your car is watching you. What can you do to stop it?
Many vehicles today and their related phone apps are packed with safety and convenience features, including digital maps, navigation linked to GPS and the internet, remote starting and vehicle locaters to find your car in a crowded parking lot. Many also have microphones for voice control and some have cameras that detect who is driving to adjust things such as the seat.
But those features and others can have a dark side: Many can track where you go and when, how fast you drive and how hard you brake, where you park and spend time, even what music or podcasts you listen to. Such information can be a gold mine for marketers and insurers—and a target for hackers.
Privacy researchers say car buyers may not realise they agree to have such data collected by the automaker when they sign the papers for a new vehicle or use the carmaker’s phone app.
The Mozilla Foundation, a technology-focused nonprofit, examined the privacy practices of 25 car brands. Its conclusion: “These are the worst of any [product] category we’ve reviewed,” says Jen Caltrider, director of the group’s Privacy Not Included program. Among its findings are that most carmakers collect personal information, give customers little control over it, and may sell or share it with others.
Privacy experts say they also are concerned about provisions in car-maker privacy policies that allow them to share driver information with law-enforcement authorities under certain circumstances—sometimes without a warrant.
On May 14, the Federal Trade Commission told vehicle makers that it was monitoring their actions regarding car data. “Cars are much like mobile phones when it comes to revealing consumers’ persistent, precise location,” the agency said in a blog post. It added that companies “do not have the free license to monetise people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service….”
The car industry says that the combination of vehicle data monitoring, GPS and wireless communication—a field known as telematics—provides important features, some of them safety-related. Some systems can detect when you’ve been in an accident and call emergency services, or locate a car if it’s stolen. They can help you avoid a traffic jam or potential road hazards. Cars also can give you maintenance reminders, such as when a vehicle needs an oil change or new tires, and allow the carmaker to track the durability and function of certain components for future improvements.
A vehicle-industry trade group in 2014 issued voluntary guidelines for the collection and use of car data. The group, now called the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, says its members should give car owners and lessees choice in the “collection, use and sharing” of certain information and that this information should be collected “only as needed for legitimate business purposes.”
Some privacy groups, however, say the voluntary guidelines aren’t specific enough and aren’t always followed.
“It seems like an empty promise,” says Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy expert with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Car companies are becoming tech companies. Self-policing hasn’t been shown in other tech industries to be a reliable way for companies to operate.”
What is needed, according to these experts, is a federal privacy-protection law along the lines of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. The car industry, for its part, also backs a federal privacy law , in part to have a nationwide standard as a number of states have adopted their own, differing laws.
Most carmakers issue their own lengthy privacy policies stating how they collect and disseminate car data. Some state that they can share or sell the information to third parties including marketers if the car owner agrees to it.
Among the six biggest sellers of vehicles in the U.S., Ford Motor says customers can turn off data and location sharing with the company. It says it “doesn’t sell any connected-vehicle data to brokers, period.” General Motors says it is “fostering trust through responsible data practices, enhanced user controls and clear benefits for customers.” Toyota says it gives customers “transparency and choice” in how vehicle data is collected and used and that they can “turn off all data transmission.”
Stellantis, owner of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, says any data it collects “is in accordance with applicable state privacy laws . Accordingly, Stellantis provides customers with a way to opt out of data collection.” Honda says it is “very clear about what we collect and how our owners can opt out” and “when we might share collected data with third parties.” Hyundai declined to comment and deferred to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation for a response.
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A growing number of employers say Gen Z job seekers are bringing their parents into the hiring process, from attending interviews and negotiating offers to questioning performance reviews. Recruiters warn the trend may raise concerns about independence, even as some families see it as support in a challenging job market.
4 min
Steven Clark had the unpleasant task of firing a 24-year-old—twice. Once was in a brief conversation with the new hire, who’d showed up late or not at all four times in his first week at a construction job.
Then Clark had to do it all over again, this time with the guy’s mother.
She called him a few hours later, pleading to give her son another chance. When Clark told her no, things got heated before he ended the call.
“I said, ‘Look, you know, this is between us and your son. He’s the employee,’” says Clark, who is chief operating officer of a Fairbanks, Alaska-based staffing firm.
Gen Zers make up nearly one-fifth of the adult workforce, and bosses and recruiters say it often feels like the nervous parents who hovered over them through childhood and college are right alongside them. What began as the occasional parent ride-along to a job interview coming out of the Covid era is now full-on career “co-piloting,” said Jasmine Escalera, head career coach at résumé templates service Zety.
More parents are calling up hiring managers, applying for jobs on their adult child’s behalf, and even showing up—or lurking just off-screen—on Zoom calls to help navigate difficult conversations or go over benefits packages.
“The first time it happened, I was appalled,” says Clark, who has fielded calls from parents asking why their child didn’t get a job. “Since then it’s become more of a here-we-go-again reaction.”
Human resource professionals have expressed outrage on social media.
“Parents should not be calling employers to check on their application status or ask questions on behalf of their child,” says Lynne Alba, a director of talent acquisition and physician recruitment at a large health system on Long Island, who vented about the phenomenon in a Tik Tok video she reposted on LinkedIn.
At a recent job fair, a mother approached Alba with her daughter’s résumé, explaining that she wanted to work as a nurse. “While I appreciated that she was trying to help, I intentionally shifted my attention to her daughter. No matter what Mom said, I wanted to hear directly from the candidate,” says Alba.
Some parents who step in say it’s a challenging job market for young people, and that they would only intervene in extreme circumstances—social anxiety, a toxic boss, unfair treatment. There’s also a gray area of intervention that some see as an extension of the parental advice and networking help that’s been happening for generations.
Rick Wainschel last year published a post on LinkedIn asking his network to help his daughter, a recent college graduate, find a corporate entry-level position.
Wainschel, a vice president at an automotive marketing technology company, says he doesn’t think his outreach qualifies as helicoptering. “Well, maybe a little,” he said, before quickly adding he was being half tongue-in-cheek. “It was really merely just to help her get a network established. I just think the work world is a challenging place.”
Wainschel’s post, which was OK’d by his daughter on the condition he didn’t embarrass her, didn’t lead to a job but did result in productive conversations, he said. She found a job with a credit union on her own shortly after.
Recruiters and other HR types say aggressive parental involvement signals a lack of independence and raises fears that mom and dad will be checking in regularly if their kid gets hired.
What’s more, they say, such interference rarely, if ever, works.
The phenomenon is becoming so commonplace it made the agenda of human resources organization SHRM’s national conference in June. When James Harrell asked a room of 250 professionals if they ever had a parent calling on behalf of a young employee or coming to an interview, more than half raised their hands.
“The first time it happened to me, I got high up on my soapbox and I shook my fist,” Harrell says. “The 15th time I said, ‘OK, well, I gotta figure out how to do something differently.’”
Harrell helped run an apprenticeship program for high-school students while he was the human capital management chief for the San Antonio Independent School District. To run interference, the district introduced a “signing day” when parents could come and ask questions.
After a Gen Z employee at Nation’s Best Holdings, a chain of hardware and home goods stores, didn’t get an “exceeds expectations” designation on his performance review last year, HR chief Amber Little got a call asking why.
It was one of a number of calls from parents her office has picked up recently about issues ranging from negative feedback to understanding which health insurance plan to choose. Little has even noticed parents are now calling in sick for their adult kids.
“Instead of coaching them, they do it for them,” Little says. When it happens, she adds, “we encourage them to tell their child to come talk to us and we will walk them through it.”
A Zety survey of more than 1,000 Gen Zers found 20% had a parent attend a job interview with them.
“You get a sense it’s all hands on deck for some families,” says Keith Wolf, managing partner of recruiting firm Murray Resources in Houston. His office has received emails from parents seeking jobs for their children, and Wolf says he’s always wondered if the kids even knew.
Paul “PB” Branson, who graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in May, bristles at the thought. The 22-year-old says while he understands their anxiety, parents shouldn’t be joining their children’s job interviews or contacting employees on their behalf.
“That trend,” he says, “has really hurt my generation by creating this kind of stereotype that we need our hands held.”
