Nissan spies on you're sexuality, sexual exploits. Your data is big money for companies

It has recently come to my attention that some companies are even more creepy and slimy than I thought. If you know me that's saying a lot. But even I did not think a car manufacturer would invade someone's privacy to this extent.

Nissan is doing things they should not

First, I want to nip any conspiracy BS in the bud. This is taken directly from Nissan´s own webpage and privacy notice, a link to it in its full can be found at the end. But let us take a look at what exactly it is that Nissan is doing and why they are doing it. The following it a screen dump from the Nissan webpage. It can be found in the section"Categories of information we collect and disclose".

Let us take a look at what data they are collecting, sexual orientation, and sexual activity. Why the f is that even something they would, or should for that matter, collect data on? Those two things are none of Nissan's concern. What people do and with whom they are doing it with that have nothing to do with Nissan at all. What my or anyone else's sexual orientation is is something that only concerns one person and one person only. And with whom or who that person chooses to engage in sexual activity is definitely not something that is of anyone else's concern other than the involved parties. Unless you're in the UK and like to go doggying that is. I guess that would sort of involve others. ^^

The other information is likewise not something that I would consider things that a car manufacturer should know. Why would, or should they, know my immigration- or citizenship status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs? Also, why are they tracking my, or the cars, every movement? None of these things should be collected by anyone, lest not a car company.

But let's move on and see if they have a legitimate reason for collecting the data. They might actually have one, even if the odds of it are way lower than a snowball's chance in hell. Okay, so they track my every movement because someone might need to know where I am at a certain point. I guess we skipped everything and went straight down to the geolocation. I mean why do things in the same order? The next thing is targeted marketing and internal reporting and analytics purposes. So that is the reason they want everything other than your location, or I guess your location fits snuggly in here as well.

In short, they want to be able to know everything about you in order to sell you anything they can smack their Nissan logo on. But there is more, if we take a look at the last section we see that they disclose this information to service providers or affiliates. This basically means anyone who pays Nissan money can get the Nissan customer's data. And that is actually the same reason they collect it in the first place, greed. They want to wring every last cent out of you that they can. And if that means selling your data to any company that is willing to pay... I mean becoming an "affiliate" of Nissan so be it.

I know at least I would love to see more targeted ads such as this from Nissan: Hi your anarchist there, we know things can get a little "all over" the place while you're doing it in the backseat after dropping off your children at the school. But no worries, the mess is easily removed by our affiliates' brand-new easy-to-use one-time-use wipes. The [be]cum clean wipe. Get them now for $9.99." Or the wife getting spammed by commercials for divorce lawyers.

Is Nissan the only "bad egg"?

Sadly no. The Mozilla Foundation has reviewed 25 automakers regarding their consumer privacy. And surprise surprise all 25 of them failed their test and earned the prestigious PNI mark, Privacy Not Included. Of the 25, 19 say they can sell or share the personal data. Over half say they will share the date with the government or law enforcement, even if no warrant is served. Kia mentions sex life, and General Motors and Ford both mention race and sexual orientation.

They do say this about Nissan about the data they collect, they can make out preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes of its users. Nissan says it can infer how smart you are, then sell that assessment to third parties. The person also said this "probably the worst car company we reviewed, and that says something because all car companies are really bad at privacy. ... Please people, if you care even a little about privacy, please stay as far away from Nissan's cars, apps, and connected services as you possibly can, ... Nissan's privacy policy stands out as one of the most amazing things I've ever read, ... They aren't shy about saying they could collect all of this stuff". So it looks like the other car companies are bad, but Nissan is the gold standard when it comes to being a shitty company.

But Nissan and car companies are sadly far from the only ones looking to take a peak and collect things they should not. In April this year, Tesla was hit by a class action lawsuit after Reuters reported that groups of Tesla employees shared pictures and videos obtained from the car's many cameras. This was going on between 2019 and 2022. At least there is no mention of sex or sexual activity or orientation in Tesla's privacy notice. But they, like Nissan, share the data they collect with "Our service providers, business partners and affiliates". *sigh*

Meta, formerly Facebook, is also a shining example of this. As their whole business model is to harvest personal information and sell it to anyone. Hence Cambridge Analytics getting the voter data they used to help Trump during his first campaign from them. As well as the Russians that were trying to influence voters got their date that way. But Meta is trying to take it even further. Their headset Meta wanted everyone to buy to be able to use their "revolutionary" game? Meta Quest 2, which looked like a bad Nintendo Wii game reportedly had 5 external cameras as well as 5 internal cameras. And according to Meta, they were supposed to be used to make your cartoon sausage finger avatar look more real. However, they were not able to say when the feature would be added to the game. But why not collect the data straight away? "only used to make the avatar look more real"... "ok, I believe you".

And I guess the list goes on and on. I find it so infuriating that companies put shit like this into every legal document they can. And they will collect everything they can, as well as sell it to anyone willing to pay for it. Hopefully, this, and other posts, will help shine a light on the problem. And if we do it enough times then hopefully we can achieve a change.

There is also a small bit of positive news. Yesterday it was reported that Norway successfully sued Meta for breaching the GDPR regarding the data they are collecting from their users. They were only fined ~$100.000 a day for a maximum of 90 days if they don't comply and stop collecting the data. Not a large sum in of itself, but now every other country in the EU is standing ready to file the same lawsuit against them as GDPR is the same all across the EU. And yes Norway is not part of the EU, but they are part of GDPR. And this all in all is looking like it will stop Facebook and Instagram from at least collecting the data in the EU. There has been talk about free and paid versions of these. Whereas the pay version would not collect any data for marketing. But so far they are only speculations.

Hopefully, this post has made you a little more aware of what the corporations around us are doing all the time. With or without our conscious consent. And just maybe if we are lucky we will be able to reverse this trend of invasion of our privacy.

Please share your thoughts on any and all of this mentioned here, or any other concern about privacy you might have. The comment section is all yours. Links to everything mentioned can be found at the bottom.

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See you on the interwebs!

Picture provided by: https://pixabay.com/, https://www.nissanusa.com/privacy.html

Resources

1. https://www.nissanusa.com/privacy.html
2. https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/06/mozilla_vehicle_data_privacy/
3. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-alleged-privacy-intrusion-2023-04-08/
4. https://www.wired.com/story/metas-vr-headset-quest-pro-personal-data-face/
5. https://apnews.com/article/meta-norway-privacy-instagram-facebook-adveristing-ac2c67434dcaa92de302071403e20260