I don’t know why this topic comes to mind. It seems like our personal data is constantly being used and then exposed by hackers. Cars shouldn’t seem so vulnerable. They seem separate from a computer. But really, computers are everywhere and everything is connected, isn’t it?
Car makers collect driver data. Those known for extensive data collection are Tesla, Hyundai and Kia. Driving behaviour (braking, acceleration), voice commands, and sensitive information like geolocation are often shared with third parties like insurance companies and lenders.
The car companies themselves use the information to analyze safety concerns and product trends, provide support and service, conduct research and development, to improve, troubleshoot and evaluate the use of products and services, and to communicate with us owners.
This data is vulnerable to cyber attacks. Since the start of 2025, Hertz reported a 2024 cyberattack that exposed customer driver’s license and credit card information. In January 2025, Volkswagen reported a breach. General Motors came under FTC action for sharing data. In March Hyundai notified owners that hackers gained access to personal information.
Keeping all this data secure is a big deal and the data being sold to third companies is worth pennies per car. Honda sold data for $1 million on roughly 1.7 million cars over a six-year period. That comes to 61 cents per car. So little being made.
It just seems like it is collected because it can be collected. Some entrepreneurial employee came up with the idea and got the creative employee award. I see this scenario replaying in company after company after company.
Or it could relate to power over others. Take Tesla one of the great data collectors: so much information is collected by Tesla that the Las Vegas police got key details about the truck’s driver identity and the explosion’s cause. The articles doesn’t say how quickly they got the information, just that they got it without any effort.
Who would have guessed that 50 years ago, when we were rolling up the windows by hand. And now cars are a privacy nightmare spying on us.
I figured out how to add a signature to images in Lightroom yesterday. It only just occurred to me to do this for the watercolour images and the original art pieces. So I looked it up and it was quite easy to do.
Here it is on one of my painter palette abstracts. I take pictures of the artists’ watercolour palettes in the Monday morning sessions, then manipulate the images in Flexify, and assemble them into collage images.
Making a signature with a mouse in Photoshop is no easy task. It makes me sympathetic towards young people who haven’t been taught recursive writing.
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