🚗 Your car knows more about you than Pinterest needs to

Northeastern University researchers tested 21 vehicles and 30 automaker apps — and found Pinterest, Snap and Meta receiving VINs straight from General Motors' apps. Why does Pinterest need your VIN? Nobody's saying.

GM's four apps were sending VINs to 10 companies including Microsoft and Adobe. The catch: a VIN isn't like a phone ad ID — you can't reset it. Pair it with an email once, and ad networks have you forever.

28 of 30 apps contacted advertising or analytics companies. GM is already under a 20-year FTC privacy order over its driver-data scandal, though the testing predates that order. Of everyone studied, only Honda actually changed anything.

The rest shrugged: it's all in the vendor contracts, they said. Seven added that users should read the terms of every pre-installed service themselves. Convenient.

Engadget