Privacy and modern cars through a dual lens

TL;DR

This paper assesses drivers' privacy concerns and the readability of car privacy policies through objective analysis and surveys, revealing a general lack of understanding and the need for better privacy awareness in modern vehicles.

Contribution

It introduces a dual approach combining readability analysis of privacy policies with driver opinion surveys to evaluate privacy perceptions in modern cars.

Findings

Privacy policies are often difficult to understand for drivers.

Most drivers lack sufficient awareness of their privacy rights.

Future car technologies should enhance privacy transparency and user awareness.

Abstract

Modern cars technologies are evolving quickly. They collect a variety of personal data and treat it on behalf of the car manufacturer to improve the drivers' experience. The precise terms of such a treatment are stated within the privacy policies accepted by the user when buying a car or through the infotainment system when it is first started. This paper uses a double lens to assess people's privacy while they drive a car. The first approach is objective and studies the readability of privacy policies that comes with cars. We analyse the privacy policies of twelve car brands and apply well-known readability indices to evaluate the extent to which privacy policies are comprehensible by all drivers. The second approach targets drivers' opinions to extrapolate their privacy concerns and trust perceptions. We design a questionnaire to collect the opinions of 88 participants and draw essential statistics about them. Our combined findings indicate that privacy is insufficiently understood at present as an issue deriving from driving a car, hence future technologies should be tailored to make people more aware of the issue and to enable them to express their preferences.