Comment by barrkel
1 year ago
> An employee familiar with G.M.’s Smart Driver said the company’s annual revenue from the program is in the low millions of dollars.
It doesn't seem in the car company's interests to take on the reputational risk for this kind of financial reward.
What sort of "reputational risk" do you think they are taking on?
Data sharing with third parties is ubiquitous in almost all industries. Every single company that deals with financial products reports account information to third parties (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, Early Warning Services, ChexSystems). If you return an item at a retail store it gets reported to fraud alert databases. Most medium to large employers report the contents of the paychecks of their employees to The Work Number. Insurance claims are reported to LexisNexis. Oil change companies report milage to CarFax, which insurance companies use to look up if you're reporting accurate mileage.
Data reporting and sharing is ubiquitous; it's standard operating procedure. Having a few "privacy nerds" complain about it on the Internet is not risking their reputation.
> What sort of "reputational risk" do you think they are taking on?
> a few "privacy nerds" complain about it on the Internet is not risking their reputation.
The news about GM's OnStar tattling (their words) on drivers is front page on several big news sites like CNN. This is not just some privacy nerds, this is a whole bunch of mainstream media outlets calling out GM by name.
I'm confident the PR team at GM is working overtime right now to try and find a mitigating spin.
> It doesn't seem in the car company's interests to take on the reputational risk for this kind of financial reward.
Tell that to Boeing, they're on course to tank the entire company out of the financial shenanigans they pulled after 1997.
As soon as a company goes publicly traded, the incentives change - there is no more priority on long term, the only thing that matters is INVESTORS INVESTORS INVESTORS (read that one in your finest Steve Ballmer voice).
Short term profit long term losses things are done a lot.
Also, companies seem to work against their own interests quite often. The spyware is probably on some separate budget with separate bonuses attached. So "locally" in the department it might make financial sense to spy on the users.