If you follow the links, the first thing it tells you is "Download the app".[1]
Vehicle Data Sharing appears to be opt-out, not opt-in. They do say "If you’d like to ensure you’re not sharing data, check Vehicle Connectivity in your Settings menu in-vehicle and toggle it off." After doing that, someone should check to see if the wireless modem is still emitting.
Every car generates data. Just look at the odometer. Which is also often required. Or at the very least, would otherwise require you to be keeping track of mileage. So it wouldn’t be the car generating data, it would be you generating it.
Generating data is good, as long as it's limited to metrics about the vehicle and its use. It can help diagnose issues. It doesn't have to leave the vehicle though. Garages can simply read it locally when required.
What caused the fault? In the case that the error code encodes everything you actually need to solve the problem, sure, but having used OBDii readers I doubt that's universally the case. If you'd like to pay the mechanic more to diagnose the problem, sure. It seems it would be better to make it illegal for the mechanics to upload your data without your consent though.
Even better, knowing someone with one of these trucks - every time it does a software update (which it does over the air, and which apparently cannot be disabled), it re-enables a bunch of shit and forces you to opt-out again.
Can confirm. Reverts opt-outs. Resets some settings. Generally a worse experience with each update.
Why would I want to know how fast my truck is charging at a supercharger? Thats no longer an option.
A 9-digit payout is a lot of incentive. I imagine the pennies they get from selling your data surreptitiously just is not worth the hassle. It costs way less than $220M to write up a privacy policy and provide working toggles in the user interface. And they may even generate goodwill.
First thing it told me when I was setting up the customization area was something around ...if you enable BMW account sync, this car will transmit all audio, video and any other data recorded to BMW for its use blah blah...
Even more, I don’t want to be generating data when I drive. It’s a god*mn car. I want it to move me down the road and stop when I press the brakes. That’s it.
So the right answer is to provide an option for you to do that. Which hopefully this policy is saying that they do. But if what they are asserting is correct (and I think it is plausibly so), the majority of customers want features that can only function with the data.
> ...the majority of customers want features that can only function with the data.
So the right answer is to leave the data collection mechanisms entirely disabled until the customer enables a feature that requires it, enable only the data collection mechanisms required by that feature, and disable them again -and purge all data collected by them- when the feature is disabled.
The physical modules that collect this data and transmit this data should be easily removable by the customer, for those who know that they will never want those features to be provided by their car.
The odds that this is what Ford is doing -at least in the US- are 0%.
Generating data? I mean car components are very computerized nowadays: they have to be to produce the efficiency and power people demand of car engines.
Data has to be generated to do that. Once that's done, some other modules can record it and off load it pretty easy.
To have a car that "moves down the road and brakes" only, you'd have to go back to cars of the 90s, minimum. Which at the very least you can't do with all the added automotive regulations that have been added since then (which I agree with eliminating btw, but one has to wade through all the FUD that the environmental lobby will pump out, that too many believe have helped).
Then maybe, just maybe, we could sell new kei trucks, etc here in the US again.
Easiest way to control your data is to pull the telemetry unit out of of your car and never take the car to the dealership. This isn't easy, but it's worth it.
When that feature is remote telemetry, yeah it is correct.
Its nice knowing the doors are actually locked when you issue a remote unlock and then lock command when a friend is trying to grab something and you didn't want to handle the logistics of them getting to you to get the keys to get to the car and then back to you. Or making sure you really did lock it when you walked away.
It's nice knowing the state of charge while the car is on the charger and get that data somewhat live while it's charging and you're in a restaurant or whatever.
It's nice having the last known location on a map when you're trying to find the car in a maze of a parking lot and it turns out it wasn't parked in lot H row 72 like you thought you remembered.
It's nice starting the AC or heat well before you get to the car and are far out of range of the key remote.
There's a lot of telemetry that's kind of nice to have, assuming you can have control over it and who it's shared with. It's not nice having it shared without your consent and potentially used against you.
If I had a choice I would not even consider connecting a car to the internet just to have those features.
BTW, many of those features were available over 433MHz radio well before cars were connected to the internet. Some have even had better usability:
The "find car" would sound the horn or blink the lights. This new phone app solution requires you to pull out the phone instead of the car key, turn on gps, wait for a fix (imagine that in an underground parking!), turn on data, get car position (which might be wrong for the same weak gps reasons), figure out how to get to it on a tiny map... etc.
> many of those features were available over 433MHz radio well before cars were connected to the internet.
And as I've said before here many times, it usually had really shitty range making those features nearly useless. It's not the same. If you have to be within like a 15 second walk (if even that far), remote start is practically worthless by comparison. It takes at least a few minutes to really start cooling down or warming up a car. And having such a limited range to just hope you hear the lock honk/beep isn't nearly as useful to find a car rather than just seeing it's position on a map.
As someone who lives in a place where we get months of 100F+ days having reliable long range remote start is a killer feature. I don't think I'd bother buying a car today without that feature.
> This new phone app solution requires you to pull out the phone instead of the car key
Well, I don't normally carry a car key as I just usey phone for that these days...so...about that...
> turn on gps, wait for a fix (imagine that in an underground parking!)
Have you never used a device with AGPS or a modern smartphone generally? I can't remember having to seriously wait for a GPS fix, and it can find location from things like cellular and WiFi networks. My experience is almost always just open the app, tap vehicle location, and boom practically instantly there's a map with the last known location of my car. There isn't any waiting.
We had remote starters and heaters long before the Internet. Local communication ensures someone halfway around the world won't be able to control your car, but apparently it's too difficult (really?) or not invasive enough for their surveillance desires.
Remote starters generally had really poor range. I know, I've owned a few of them over the years. Often you need direct line of sight and have to be somewhat close, usually only slightly better range than the regular fob assuming you installed it right.
It was a terrible experience compared to being able to issue the command from anywhere. I can be in the middle of a shopping mall and start having the car cool down well before I get there, while before I'd practically have to already be on the right floor of the parking garage.
It takes someone to store some of this data somewhere. I'd prefer more choices on how this data is handled, no doubt. See the last sentence of my previous comment.
But yes, generally speaking and replying to your original question of "requires telemetry to remotely access certain features on their car", yes it takes some kind of access to telemetry data to access telemetry data. The whole feature is access to telemetry data in the end, presented in useful ways.
Whether Ford uses some kind of homomorphic encryption to handle that data or sets up end to end encryption between your phone and the data receiver from the car or allows you to configure third party telemetry retrieval services is a whole different question to ask.
The technology required to make it possible for you to send a remote HVAC command to your car without Ford necessarily being able to tell that you did that is complex enough that I expect most FAANG companies wouldn't pull it off successfully.
I really have one big question about connected vehicle privacy: do you provide the data to insurance companies? This website is opaque enough that I can't even find the answer to that question. What a joke to be celebrating your privacy principles when that isn't even answerable.
I'm not going to say I'm not suspicious, but the third bullet point under "Our Privacy Promise" says "We also never sell data about how you drive your vehicle to data brokers". Then further down the page we have the FAQs, which has:
Q: "Does Ford sell customer data about your personal vehicle's driving behavior to data brokers or insurance companies?"
A: No
Again: I don't know how much I trust them, and when I get a new car I'll probably be doing some research to see which ones will still run after I physically disconnect the wireless modem, but they DO answer that question
Yes, like Google does it. If they sell it, the other party has a copy to keep and use. If they rent access charged per query they have an income stream.
When dealing with an industry and company that historically has trafficked heavily in deception and legal sleight-of-hand, this is not something that can simply be assumed.
Do they have contracts in place with every single entity they provide your personal data to, regardless of context, that they are not allowed to sell/exchange/give away said personal data to data brokers or insurance companies and that such an agreement must be made with any and every company that, in turn, acquires this data?
Oh! And lets not forget the ever-important derivative information.
Information derived from your personal information that Ford or any other car manufacturer collects that can still identify you should also be off the table for ever getting in the hands of data brokers or insurance companies under any context.
I fully expect a Louis Rossmann video by tomorrow detailing every privacy fuck-up Ford has done in the last 3 months and how this promise is really just a promise to take away ownership in the name of protection.
If you follow the links, the first thing it tells you is "Download the app".[1]
Vehicle Data Sharing appears to be opt-out, not opt-in. They do say "If you’d like to ensure you’re not sharing data, check Vehicle Connectivity in your Settings menu in-vehicle and toggle it off." After doing that, someone should check to see if the wireless modem is still emitting.
[1] https://www.ford.com/data-and-privacy/manage-your-settings/c...
Personally I would like a car that simply does not generate any "data" in the first place.
Every car generates data. Just look at the odometer. Which is also often required. Or at the very least, would otherwise require you to be keeping track of mileage. So it wouldn’t be the car generating data, it would be you generating it.
Generating data is good, as long as it's limited to metrics about the vehicle and its use. It can help diagnose issues. It doesn't have to leave the vehicle though. Garages can simply read it locally when required.
No, generating data is NOT good. Garages would read metrics and upload them. How is that any better?
Error codes for faults and nothing else are enough.
What caused the fault? In the case that the error code encodes everything you actually need to solve the problem, sure, but having used OBDii readers I doubt that's universally the case. If you'd like to pay the mechanic more to diagnose the problem, sure. It seems it would be better to make it illegal for the mechanics to upload your data without your consent though.
Yes cause laws have been so successful at preventing unlawful upload of data.
Not in the EU, an "Event data recorder" which records speed and inputs (pedals) around the time of a crash is required by law.
Guess everyone should define what they mean by data. An error code is data. Pretty much any kind of information is data.
All I can read from that title is double-speak about how it's your responsibility to opt out, your problem if you don't.
Even better, knowing someone with one of these trucks - every time it does a software update (which it does over the air, and which apparently cannot be disabled), it re-enables a bunch of shit and forces you to opt-out again.
Super creepy.
Can confirm. Reverts opt-outs. Resets some settings. Generally a worse experience with each update. Why would I want to know how fast my truck is charging at a supercharger? Thats no longer an option.
I'll guess they timed the announcement, to contrast with GM paying out 9 figures for selling consumer data - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/10/gm-to-pay-220-million-a...
It'd be lovely if other automakers followed suit, but I wouldn't actually bet on Ford keeping its Promise.
A 9-digit payout is a lot of incentive. I imagine the pennies they get from selling your data surreptitiously just is not worth the hassle. It costs way less than $220M to write up a privacy policy and provide working toggles in the user interface. And they may even generate goodwill.
Don't let Ford PR crowd out the primary message that they collect and sell your data.
They only tried to crowd it out with the word "No." however.
"Your data is safe with us."
No, our data is barely even safe with ourselves. It's definitely not safe with anyone else!
> "Your data is safe with us."
Will you sign a legal statement to that effect?
Yeah, didn't think so.
You know who really needs to do this? BMW.
First thing it told me when I was setting up the customization area was something around ...if you enable BMW account sync, this car will transmit all audio, video and any other data recorded to BMW for its use blah blah...
Ugh
I don’t want a privacy policy. I want my data, and I don’t want them to have it.
Even more, I don’t want to be generating data when I drive. It’s a god*mn car. I want it to move me down the road and stop when I press the brakes. That’s it.
So the right answer is to provide an option for you to do that. Which hopefully this policy is saying that they do. But if what they are asserting is correct (and I think it is plausibly so), the majority of customers want features that can only function with the data.
> ...the majority of customers want features that can only function with the data.
So the right answer is to leave the data collection mechanisms entirely disabled until the customer enables a feature that requires it, enable only the data collection mechanisms required by that feature, and disable them again -and purge all data collected by them- when the feature is disabled.
The physical modules that collect this data and transmit this data should be easily removable by the customer, for those who know that they will never want those features to be provided by their car.
The odds that this is what Ford is doing -at least in the US- are 0%.
They keep telling the public that. Their assertions do not have value without trustworthy data to back them up.
I don’t trust their options. Get rid of the tracking and the data.
Like what?
Features that require the data to be available to Ford, please.
Generating data? I mean car components are very computerized nowadays: they have to be to produce the efficiency and power people demand of car engines. Data has to be generated to do that. Once that's done, some other modules can record it and off load it pretty easy.
To have a car that "moves down the road and brakes" only, you'd have to go back to cars of the 90s, minimum. Which at the very least you can't do with all the added automotive regulations that have been added since then (which I agree with eliminating btw, but one has to wade through all the FUD that the environmental lobby will pump out, that too many believe have helped).
Then maybe, just maybe, we could sell new kei trucks, etc here in the US again.
But it would be too inefficient for you to compute with it locally. Thinks of all the AI companies that will be harmed by your vehicle's RAM usage! /s
Easiest way to control your data is to pull the telemetry unit out of of your car and never take the car to the dealership. This isn't easy, but it's worth it.
There should be an "airplane mode" for cars.
not the “flying cars” we wanted, but it’s the “flying cars” we need
There’s still telemetry from map apps. I just flat out kill location services on my phone these days.
> never take the car to the dealership. This isn't easy, but it's worth it.
How much is the first 3 years of maintenance worth?
So far less than $200 for the basic stuff like oil, filters. I’ve spent maybe about $600-$800 total in ~5 years because I got new tires. I bought new.
> What does Ford use connected vehicle data for?
The answer to this question is simply "money". Ford uses your data for money.
Why is there even data
Because a lot of people like the ability to remotely access certain features on their car, and this requires telemetry.
it requires telemetry to remotely access certain features on their car? that doesnt seem correct.
When that feature is remote telemetry, yeah it is correct.
Its nice knowing the doors are actually locked when you issue a remote unlock and then lock command when a friend is trying to grab something and you didn't want to handle the logistics of them getting to you to get the keys to get to the car and then back to you. Or making sure you really did lock it when you walked away.
It's nice knowing the state of charge while the car is on the charger and get that data somewhat live while it's charging and you're in a restaurant or whatever.
It's nice having the last known location on a map when you're trying to find the car in a maze of a parking lot and it turns out it wasn't parked in lot H row 72 like you thought you remembered.
It's nice starting the AC or heat well before you get to the car and are far out of range of the key remote.
There's a lot of telemetry that's kind of nice to have, assuming you can have control over it and who it's shared with. It's not nice having it shared without your consent and potentially used against you.
If I had a choice I would not even consider connecting a car to the internet just to have those features.
BTW, many of those features were available over 433MHz radio well before cars were connected to the internet. Some have even had better usability:
The "find car" would sound the horn or blink the lights. This new phone app solution requires you to pull out the phone instead of the car key, turn on gps, wait for a fix (imagine that in an underground parking!), turn on data, get car position (which might be wrong for the same weak gps reasons), figure out how to get to it on a tiny map... etc.
> many of those features were available over 433MHz radio well before cars were connected to the internet.
And as I've said before here many times, it usually had really shitty range making those features nearly useless. It's not the same. If you have to be within like a 15 second walk (if even that far), remote start is practically worthless by comparison. It takes at least a few minutes to really start cooling down or warming up a car. And having such a limited range to just hope you hear the lock honk/beep isn't nearly as useful to find a car rather than just seeing it's position on a map.
As someone who lives in a place where we get months of 100F+ days having reliable long range remote start is a killer feature. I don't think I'd bother buying a car today without that feature.
> This new phone app solution requires you to pull out the phone instead of the car key
Well, I don't normally carry a car key as I just usey phone for that these days...so...about that...
> turn on gps, wait for a fix (imagine that in an underground parking!)
Have you never used a device with AGPS or a modern smartphone generally? I can't remember having to seriously wait for a GPS fix, and it can find location from things like cellular and WiFi networks. My experience is almost always just open the app, tap vehicle location, and boom practically instantly there's a map with the last known location of my car. There isn't any waiting.
We had remote starters and heaters long before the Internet. Local communication ensures someone halfway around the world won't be able to control your car, but apparently it's too difficult (really?) or not invasive enough for their surveillance desires.
Remote starters generally had really poor range. I know, I've owned a few of them over the years. Often you need direct line of sight and have to be somewhat close, usually only slightly better range than the regular fob assuming you installed it right.
It was a terrible experience compared to being able to issue the command from anywhere. I can be in the middle of a shopping mall and start having the car cool down well before I get there, while before I'd practically have to already be on the right floor of the parking garage.
in a room full of experts, sometimes it takes an idiot to point out, really none of these things requires Ford to store data in a way it can access
It takes someone to store some of this data somewhere. I'd prefer more choices on how this data is handled, no doubt. See the last sentence of my previous comment.
But yes, generally speaking and replying to your original question of "requires telemetry to remotely access certain features on their car", yes it takes some kind of access to telemetry data to access telemetry data. The whole feature is access to telemetry data in the end, presented in useful ways. Whether Ford uses some kind of homomorphic encryption to handle that data or sets up end to end encryption between your phone and the data receiver from the car or allows you to configure third party telemetry retrieval services is a whole different question to ask.
The technology required to make it possible for you to send a remote HVAC command to your car without Ford necessarily being able to tell that you did that is complex enough that I expect most FAANG companies wouldn't pull it off successfully.
How else would you imagine making those features work? Short of magic, I am not seeing a way.
Features such as....?
OK, so what's the punishment if they do it anyway? What's their skin in the game beyond and oopsie-apology?
Well, didn't GM just lose a 9-digit lawsuit? That sounds like punishment.
Do you have a link? Did they really pay?
I doubt the money has changed hands yet, but yesterday they announced that they reached a settlement to pay that amount.
I really have one big question about connected vehicle privacy: do you provide the data to insurance companies? This website is opaque enough that I can't even find the answer to that question. What a joke to be celebrating your privacy principles when that isn't even answerable.
> do you provide the data to insurance companies? This website is opaque enough that I can't even find the answer to that question.
It is literally one of the few specific questions they address:
"Does Ford sell customer data about your personal vehicle's driving behavior to data brokers or insurance companies?" And their answer was one word.
> personal vehicle's driving behavior
Ah, so they're selling the data in aggregate.
And if you changed one word - from "Does" to "Will" - then it would be worth more than the almost nothing the current answer is worth.
I'm not going to say I'm not suspicious, but the third bullet point under "Our Privacy Promise" says "We also never sell data about how you drive your vehicle to data brokers". Then further down the page we have the FAQs, which has:
Q: "Does Ford sell customer data about your personal vehicle's driving behavior to data brokers or insurance companies?"
A: No
Again: I don't know how much I trust them, and when I get a new car I'll probably be doing some research to see which ones will still run after I physically disconnect the wireless modem, but they DO answer that question
They don’t sell. They might just make it available through some other arrangement though
Yes, like Google does it. If they sell it, the other party has a copy to keep and use. If they rent access charged per query they have an income stream.
Do they sell the information to another entity that, in turn, will sell it to insurance companies or data brokers?
That would be a data broker, so no, if we believe the text.
My qualm with all this is that the Q/A changes substantially if you swap “sell” to “sell or otherwise provide”.
When dealing with an industry and company that historically has trafficked heavily in deception and legal sleight-of-hand, this is not something that can simply be assumed.
Do they have contracts in place with every single entity they provide your personal data to, regardless of context, that they are not allowed to sell/exchange/give away said personal data to data brokers or insurance companies and that such an agreement must be made with any and every company that, in turn, acquires this data?
Oh! And lets not forget the ever-important derivative information.
Information derived from your personal information that Ford or any other car manufacturer collects that can still identify you should also be off the table for ever getting in the hands of data brokers or insurance companies under any context.
It's in one of the questions you have to open to see the answer to. The answer they is simply "No".
I fully expect a Louis Rossmann video by tomorrow detailing every privacy fuck-up Ford has done in the last 3 months and how this promise is really just a promise to take away ownership in the name of protection.
These fuckers don't even allow anonymous access from Tor to this very site where they claim to honor your privacy.
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