Congress Cares About Banning TikTok But Not About Our Cars Dry Snitching On Us?
Shutterstock Images.Turns out the government only cares about protecting American’s data and privacy when it comes to watching hot girls dance in bikinis or learning how to make buff chicken dip for the big game because they don’t give a fuck that our cars are being monitored by big brother.
In a new report that sounds like an episode straight out of ‘Black Mirror,’ car companies have been using our “connected” vehicles to spy on driving habits and then snitching to the insurance companies for payouts.
Fox Business- Car manufacturers like General Motors and Ford are tracking drivers' behavior through internet-connected vehicles, and sharing it with data brokers such as LexisNexis and Verisk, which create "consumer disclosure reports" on individuals that insurance companies can access.”
LexisNexis? That bullshit website our high school teachers would make us use because “Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source?” They’re the reason that national car insurance rates have risen by over 20% this year?
Listen, I’ve got no problem with Instagram using my phone mic to send me ads for products I was talking about .3 seconds prior. I think it’s helpful that even though I specifically opt out of apps tracking me that somehow they still know “what’s in my area.” It’s an invasion of privacy, but it’s convenient spying. This shit however, is not.
This doesn’t just sound like an episode of ‘Black Mirror,’ it actually is. Only this time, instead of people signing away their life rights, they are willingly allowing their cars to report: how long their trip was, how hard they break, how quickly they accelerate and how often they speed.
Every single red-blooded American, no matter political affiliation, would agree that they fucking HATE red light cameras and automated speed traps. If you don’t catch us in the act, it don’t count.
No cop, no stop, we’re living life a quarter mile at a time just the way Dom Toretto and Paul Walker (RIP) intended.
So no one, and I mean not a single soul, would knowingly sign up for this, but yet here we are. Those terms and conditions have finally come back to bite us in the ass. It’s a pork-barrel move plain and simple, “shove some shit into the middle of this 15-page document and hope no one notices,” and it worked for a while. Everybody signed up and the national average for car insurance is up too.
Automakers provided the data, LexusNexis packaged and sold it, insurance companies created driver profiles and you got deemed a risk on the road while the car companies made a few extra millions.
So now that we know about it, surely the government will take action and punish these scumbags for their shady dealings right?
What are you new here? Those geriatrics probably saw the report and thought that GM had created Transformers. They can barely download a PDF and keep their Depends clean.
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Honestly, I don’t know what I’m more offended by, the fact that these companies continue to find new ways to profit off of us or that the politicians continue to piss in our face and tell us it’s raining as they pick and choose who they should be going after.
TikTok is bad despite helping small businesses grow and amplifying free speech, but Instagram and Facebook are somehow okay even though they’ve been milking us like data cattle for years.
Same game, different rules depending on the players.
Truth is none of them are good, but some line the pockets a little better.