A Study Tested 21 Cars From 19 Brands. Advertisers and Trackers Were on the Receiving End
A study by a team of researchers at Northeastern University and Consumer Reports tested 21 cars from 19 different brands. The testing revealed patterns of traffic to advertisers and trackers, and data shared with Big Tech firms including Microsoft and Adobe.
Those recipients are the part worth sitting with. The relevant party in a connected car's data is not only the company that built the vehicle: the traffic runs outward to advertising and tracking companies and to large platform businesses that have nothing to do with driving.
Nineteen brands is also a telling number. When testing across that many marques turns up the same kinds of destinations, this looks like a category norm rather than one manufacturer's quirk — which makes brand-shopping a weak privacy strategy and moves the argument toward defaults, disclosure or regulation.
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Nineteen brands turning up the same destination types suggests the recipients are baked into the category, not selected by one maker's choices.
Traffic patterns establish the destinations. What each advertiser, tracker or platform company then does with what it receives is a separate question.