There’s a reason Verizon is willing to sell you a $600 iPhone 6S for $99.
They’re insatiable data vampires and they want to know everything about you.
That is: privacy used to mean something, but nowadays, our whereabouts, address books, purchasing habits, etc. are becoming more valuable than the product or service itself — and companies are willing to barter for those things.
You’re a veritable walking bank of your own preferences and habits.
The next frontier of data collection? Not your phone, but rather, the car you drive. A car that already knows a great deal about your behavior: your GPS log, your music choices, how fast you’re driving … even whether it’s raining based on the usage of wipers. And with an abundance of models coming complete a with built-in cellular data connection, all of this information can be monitored, recorded, reported and sold.
As reported by The Drive, most car companies currently state that they either are not monitoring driver data at all or are collecting it solely for future vehicle improvement. But mama didn’t raise a fool — that levee’s gonna break. And when it does, the question will arise: “Why give away that information for free?”
On the foreseeable horizon, we’ll no longer be dealing with the $99 pocket jockey, but the $50k roadster that comes with a contract offering you a $10k discount in exchange for allowing a car company unlimited access to your personal data.
Will you sign it, or not?
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