Your Rental Car Is Spying On You

Turns out it can strip everything off your smartphone:

Watch out how you connect to cars.

Here’s something to think about the next time you plug your phone into a rental car: The vehicle may be slurping up and recording all sorts of data, including your location, personal contacts, and even your text messages and web browsing.

That warning comes via a Federal Trade Commission blog post this week, which highlights a downside of so-called “connected cars.” The gist of it is that, today, a strange car is just like a strange computer, and consumers should be careful how them connect to them.

A blog post written by an FTC staff attorney describes how rental cars can not only access and record your cell phone data, but hold on to it for an indefinite period. The risk is obvious.

“Unless you delete that data before you return the car, other people may view it, including future renters and rental car employees or even hackers,” explains the post.

To reduce the risk, the FTC recommends consumers avoid using rentals cars’ USB ports to charge their phones, and rely on the cigarette lighter as a charging device instead.

If it is possible, and you are a fedguv target, it will happen. Nothing is left on the table under those circumstances.

The technological boom has been a mixed bag for fedguv. On the one hand, fedguv lost control of the dialog, as the internet fueled the rise of everything from Drudge to the alt-right. On the other hand, we have never been more under the thumb of fedguv and the domestic security machine. Keep your nose clean, and if you value privacy, take what precautions you can.

Forewarned is forearmed.