374
Most, if not all car companies collect and profile your data, how can I improve my privacy when buying a modern car?
(www.mozillafoundation.org)
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
374 points (99.7% liked)
Privacy
44110 readers
411 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
On the technological side of things, you're pretty much fucked no matter what. Virtually all car companies now have proprietary app integrations, partnerships with Google and Apple, and other anti-privacy features.
Some practical things you can do-
Opt out of as much data collection and sharing as you can. Read the manual and menu dive to disable optional features you don't need.
If you finance or lease from the dealer, there are likely additional data disclosures and third party sharing that you can opt out of. Read all the paperwork when you sign your purchase or lease documents. In my case I had to literally fill out and mail something in (they don't want it to be easy to opt-out because they make money from sharing the data with third parties).
With how expensive current cars are I don't know how they manage to get away with this.
Usually I go by the rule that if it's free and for profit you are the product, but cars are growing more expensive and yet they still inhibit your privacy.