Connected Car Data: Wipe Your Info Before You Sell
Your car used to remember a few basics: seat, mirrors, maybe radio presets. Tie in agentic AI and a cloud account and it starts to remember your life. It learns your routine gym nights, the clinic across town, the weekend cabin, the kid’s school run, even the kind of music that calms you in traffic. That profile can follow you from one vehicle to the next once everything is synced through the brand’s servers.
Privacy researchers have already thrown a flag on modern connected cars. Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included project reviewed 25 major car brands and found every single one failed basic expectations, calling cars “the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy.” Mozilla’s car privacy guide lays out how far this goes.
Photo by Sina Rezakhani:
Now drop an intent-reading AI on top of that. The system doesn’t just log where you went. It learns when you drive late at night, how fast you push on empty roads, the places you stop for only ten minutes, and the stores you keep returning to. Those patterns make your experience smoother—shortcuts, better suggestions, fewer taps—but they also create a powerful behavioral file on you as a driver.
Breaches prove this isn’t theoretical. A recent leak at Volkswagen’s Cariad unit reportedly exposed live and historical location data for hundreds of thousands of EVs, plus some owner details, thanks to a cloud vulnerability. Reporting on that VW incident shows how precise that tracking can be.
My Verdict
Treat your car like a smartphone with wheels. If you assume it is just a big appliance, you give away far more than you realize. You want the personalization—automatic routes, comfort that fits you, smart in-car AI suggestions—without turning your daily drives into a file you never see.
When you shop, go straight to the privacy settings. Look for clear options to keep trip data in the car, not just “share everything to improve services.” See whether you can delete old routes, wipe profiles, and shut off certain data streams without breaking the basics. If the menu feels like it is hiding the controls, believe that feeling.
You have every right to enjoy the tech and still say no to permanent tracking. Make the car earn your trust. If the assistant wants to know your life, it should also make it easy for you to see, shape, and erase the story it keeps.