Connected Services and Toyota Selling Your Telemetry

There is an ongoing class action lawsuit against Toyota for selling telemetry data to insurance companies which include speed, braking, gps, and voice. Honda, Acura, Kia, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Toyota were found to be selling this data to LexisNexis and Verisk who in turn created a score for you and sold the scores to insurance companies. GM was found to be selling on star data to insurance companies by the government.
GM agreed not to sell your data for 5 years.

For Toyota you can disconnect your car in a few ways:
1. remove the DCM module
2. pull the fuse for the DCM module
both will cause the bluetooth speaker not to work and throw an error on the dash. Nothing else will be impacted
3. Only via the Toyota app, you can disconnect all connected services- this will disable the safety connect crash detection and automatic call for help, web based map, remote key, and any visibility to car info from the app. It will NOT affect SiriusXM, Carplay, or any regular driving functions.

I disconnected the connected services. The surprise is that ALL the car settings reset. Radio station favorites, door lock settings, automated seat adjust settings, light timer settings. Makes you wonder why all this crap is connected remotely and what Toyota is doing with it.

BMW pledges never to sell personal or telemetry data without express user consent.

Toyota makes it pretty difficult to opt out of its automatic opt in. You NEED to do it with the app. Once in the app you go to your account and then privacy. It also has links for you to request hard copies of all the tracking info they have on you, request the data get deleted, and request that they do not sell your data. I made all three requests. I received an email today pictured below. Toyota is no longer selling my personal information. Note, you can make these requests without disconnecting Toyota Connect but who knows how the terms will change in the future.

This is not a matter about being a bad driver. Why should these companies be allowed to harvest telemetry and sell it? Unless you use their subscripton map, want that piece of mind of some service detecting when you are in a crash, or want the app for a digital key or maintenance reminder I strongly recommend giving Toyota the finger and disconnecting.

 

Not sure what is going on with the email picture. The text reads:


Your "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" privacy request (ID: YABFNL92PHZ) has been completed. We will stop selling or sharing your personal information to third parties. In addition, we have notified applicable third parties, where required by law, to not sell or share your personal information. Your privacy request is now closed.


Additional Information

• Please visit our Privacy Notice (Toyota) (Lexus)
• Please visit our FAQ page here.

Regards,

Privacy Team
Toyota Motor North America(TMNA)

 

Yes exactly. Cost of doing business. This makes me want to pull the fuse on the DCM altogether

 

good video. I decided to order a bypass harness.