Thursday, January 23, 2020

Even Your Car Is Watching You Now



If talking about how Facebook “stole” and sold your personal information upsets you, boy do I have bad news. We have much bigger things to worry about in 2020. Things that are much more concerning than getting personalized ads based on your profile (which, may I add, can sometimes be nice?). 

As a data analytics intern this past summer in the automotive industry, I got to be a part of the ethics conversations that are of hot debate right now. Car manufacturers now send you personalized emails based on the cars they think you’d like. Is that really any different from Facebook? Cars are getting smarter, and they’re storing more and more of your data.

What will they do with this data, you ask? Well, your car could know exactly where you’re going based on your typical schedule and automatically tell you the fastest way to get there. You could check-in to places on Facebook via your car’s location. On a more alarming note, it could tell your boss where you stopped on your way into work this morning (Dunkin Donuts, anyone?).

Your car always knows where you are, how fast you drove to get there, and what time you were driving there. It knows what music you listened to on the way, if you were calling or texting someone. Moral of the story? Your car knows a lot about you and how you drive, and one day, it could share more information than you want it to. 

Where the ethics line is drawn is a legitimate debate that analytics experts in the industry are having right now. And while we’re over here focusing on what Mark Zuckerberg can and can’t do with your personal information, maybe we should focus our attention on the other everyday items that have begun storing even more.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Hailey, great post! I really enjoyed your personable language and examples of what types of data your car could collect to keep the reader engaged. I think that adding some more images throughout your post would help keep the reader better engaged, particularly as you talk about what types of data is collected and what can be done with it. I think it would be helpful to incorporate concepts from readings we discussed, particularly around the concept of ethics and moral agents as it would help provide more insight into the ideas you discuss.

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  2. Hi Hailey, I liked the topic of your post. As we are entering the technology age, personal information becomes the No.1 thing that most people concern about. Our privacy is being exposed everywhere online such as who are we texting or which website did we browsed. And now, I am even surprised that our vehicle can learn about humans. However, one of the things that I recommend improving is to incorporate more concepts from the readings and elaborate with your main point.

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