Big Brother GPS

September 9, 2014

With rising living costs, people are trying to cut back on their expenses. One of the ways they are reducing costs is by allowing their auto insurance companies to monitor their driving habits for a discount. Science Daily highlights a Rutgers University study called “How Fast You Drive Might Reveal Exactly Where You Are Going.” What these drivers do not know is that they are revealing where they are driving. Cue the privacy concerns.

The study found that even without a GPS device, a driver reveals where they are going based off how fast they drive. When you put dollar signs in someone eyes, however, they will probably forego some of their privacy rights. Companies claim they are not compromising privacy, but the data they track can be extrapolated to show a driver’s destination.

“The technique, dubbed “elastic pathing,” predicts pathways by seeing how speed patterns match street layouts. Take for example, a person whose home is at the end of a cul-de-sac a quarter mile from an intersection. The driver’s speed data would show a minute of driving at up to 30 miles per hour to reach that intersection. Then if a left turn leads the driver to a boulevard or expressway but a right turn leads to a narrow road with frequent traffic lights or stop signs, you could deduce which way the driver turned if the next batch of speed data showed a long stretch of fast driving or a slow stretch of stop-and-go driving. By repeatedly matching speed patterns with the most likely road patterns, the route and destination can be approximated.”

The article argues that insurance companies are not doing anything wrong, but they should not advertise that the speed devices are not collecting private information. It is even suggested that insurance companies consider using alternative speedometer readings for better privacy protection. Just wait a few years for this to make more headlines or a court case could subpeona the information. It is only a matter of time.

Whitney Grace, September 09, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

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