If you are privacy minded and drive a OnStar equipped vehicle, you are probably going to start looking at the little blue button on your dash a little differently. Monday OnStar began emailing customers about a change to the companies privacy policy that will allow the company to collect and sell “anonymized” location and speed data from any vehicle with a functioning OnStar system regardless of whether there is an active OnStar subscription. The only way to “opt-out” of the new program is to completely disable the onboard OnStar components by removing the fuse for the system. (Though depending on the cars electrical system, this could also disable other “features” that a driver may still want enabled like say the GPS navigation system. I am not familiar enough with OnStar and GM cars to say exactly what disabling the built in OnStar system will do, if some one that does know want’s to chime in in the comments, that would be great.)

While it is one thing to elect to be tracked by a company so they can provide you a service, it is completely another for them to sell that tracking information without explicit consent. History has repeatedly shown that anonymized data rarely is ever anonymous, usually requiring minimal effort to associate the “anonymous” data with an individual. It is even worse when the tracking is performed on people who have no desire to use a company’s service (or in the case of a used auto sale may have never used the company’s service). This is like buying a car with a CB in it and despite never picking up the mic every word you say being broadcast. In fact a microphone is part of the OnStar system, what is to stop them from revising their policies to say that by having OnStar equipment in your car you give them permission to record everything you say and sell “anonymized” conversations to the highest bidder?

To make matters worse, because the US Government already illegally taps every phone in the country (including mobiles) and since OnStar uses cellular telephone technology for its two-way communications the Government could conceivably track every OnStar equipped car in the country (and not just the cars whose owners pay for the service – which is a possibility even now). In a worst case scenario the Government could even piggy back the OnStar communications to turn on the OnStar mic or control any of the other onboard systems OnStar has access to (like the ignition). While this is just conjecture the fact remains, the US Government has no problem illegally spying on its citizens and OnStar is going to start tracking every car infested with its hardware. Why wouldn’t they take advantage of this to better spy on protect its citizens?

What do you think? Has OnStar crossed a line? Will the Government take advantage of this move? Let us know in the comments.

Update: A rep from OnStar’s PR firm just dropped by the comments and left the following statement, “We value our customers’ privacy and security and have never sold any personally identifiable information to any third party.” He goes on to link to a video they put together regarding the new terms and conditions, scroll on down if you’re interested. Do you think this adequately addresses the concerns raised by the new terms and conditions changes? Let us know in the comments.

Update: Onstar has reversed their decision to continue tracking equipped vehicles after service is cancelled. (Read press release)

OnStar Tracks Your Car Even When You Cancel Service [via The Consumerist]

photo by rpongsaj  

Recently Facebook introduced a new “feature” called Instant Personalization that automatically opts you in to sharing your personal information (and your friend’s personal information) with various websites automatically when you visit them. Of course Facebook sells this as a feature to improve your online experience, but personally I think it is a gross invasion of your privacy (especially since Instant Personalization is automatically turned on – it would be different if you could decide that you wanted to share your information and it didn’t automatically share your friends information too). Fortunately you can opt-out of instant personalization, but Facebook does not make it easy (yesterday the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a great video showing you how to correctly opt-out, but this morning Facebook changed their site to make it even harder to opt-out completely).

Currently, to completely opt-out of Instant Personalization you need to take the following steps:

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