Wasn’t there some news a while ago that talked about how bad car companies handle user data?
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information
[…]Says Jen Caltrider, *PNI Program Director: “Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school, cry your eyes out over a break-up, or drive places you might not want the world to know about. But that perception no longer matches reality. All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information."[…] (source)
Not sure if this was the one I was thinking about. There was also this revelation made by the German CCC (Chaos computer club, pretty famous) about Volkswagen and some leaked GPS data. Here is an English article about it. (There is also the German CCC video, but the English doesn’t sound very good. It includes an interesting part where they show examples of how bad this GPS leak actually is. E.g. finding the cars of catering companies for important people.)
Criminals or spies could potentially use such data to create a detailed movement profile of the car owners. For foreign intelligence agencies, for example, it may be of interest to see whose cars are parked daily between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. near buildings belonging to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Or those which are driven regularly to the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein. The Cariad data provided such information.
Btw. Any person who in the year 2026 response to privacy concerns with “I have nothing to hide” is a certified moron and shouldn’t be trusted with anything. They also have so little imagination that it should make everyone sad.
The reason for the insult is less about not knowing how invasive modern cars are and more about the often repeated “I have nothing to hide” comment. It just shows how little they think these kinds of situations through. Unless they are very young, it also shows that any previous privacy related discussion went right by them, or they also answered the same way back than as well.