February 10, 2020 — Atlanta, Georgia — A U.S. auto auction business has teamed up with a privacy software provider to reduce the risk of personal information being leaked through automobiles.
On Friday, America’s Auto Auction, an independent auction group, announced it would offer a service to delete personal information deletion service to vehicle consignors, including OEMs banks and auto lenders, rental and business fleets, and dealers. The deletion process will be undertaken by Privacy4Cars, which has developed a mobile process designed to help erase personal information from vehicle systems.
Computer systems often store confidential information from past vehicle owners, including garage door codes, home addresses, phone identifiers, contact lists, call logs, text messages and even previous journeys.
“We often see consignors bringing vehicles to auctions that still contain the previous drivers’ personal information stored in their electronic systems,” said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars. “Now, thanks to this relationship, consignors can rely on America’s Auto Auction to dispose of the personal information stored in their vehicles, whether it’s to be compliant with internal record disposal guidelines, to provide peace of mind to their customers, or to meet the requirements of privacy and security of connected devices laws in a growing list of States.”
“This is a manual process and there is nothing standard about the vehicles that are consigned,” said America’s Auto Auction Assistant vice president Matt Arias. “We realized we needed a consistent method to efficiently clear all of the information. In short, we needed this tool.”
Developed by a cybersecurity and vehicle privacy expert, Privacy4Cars provides visual step-by-step tutorials customized to quickly clear users’ personal information while building a compliance log. Privacy4Cars’ patent-pending process is available to consumers as a free download on iOS and Android devices, and to businesses in the auto space as a subscription service.
Last spring, Justin Bull, a Toronto-based cybersecurity expert in Toronto, discussed the reasons why the automotive industry is particularly vulnerable to cybercrime with Collision Repair.
“As cars became more computerized, there wasn’t too much thought put into the idea of cybersecurity,” Bull told Collision Repair. “The direct hacking of automobiles is a bursting field of research and a very serious field of research.”
The risks posed by cybercriminals to the auto sector–and to collision repairers–may extend further than the possible exposure of client vehicle data.
“We’re finding situations where people can kill the steering wheel or remote control the brakes–-which could cause an accident or death,” Bull told Collision Repair.
For more information, visit its website.
