I stumbled on something creepy the other day – which, these days, is hard not to do. I found it on the car-buying site Edmunds.com – where it looks like more than just cars are being bought and sold.
You, for instance.
The site offers a used car value guide, which most of you reading this will already be familiar with. These have been around about as long as the Internet. You enter the year, make/model of your vehicle, along with the trim and mileage, which gives a spread of retail/trade-in values for that year make/model vehicle in (typically) Excellent, Good or Poor overall condition. This guide is your basis for figuring out approximately how much you can reasonably expect to sell your vehicle for – or get for it in trade.
“Guide” in italics – to emphasize exactly that. The values given are supposed to be not-exactly-specific because they’re based on general parameters, to guide you to a range of values for a vehicle like yours.
Not exactly yours.
Enter the creepy part. Literally. Edmunds’ value guide uses your license plate number to access the particulars about your specific vehicle. Put more finely, Edmunds – which isn’t the government – can pull up all the pertinent information about your particular vehicle
Edmunds, in other words, has access to your car’s odometer reading as well as probably pretty much everything else that the government has acquired with regard to information (say it like the off-camera voice in the old BBC Series, The Prisoner) about your vehicle, probably including any information pertaining to accidents it’s been in – and so on.
Some might not be creeped out by this. They are probably the same kinds of people who aren’t creeped out by the idea of cops stopping and frisking people without even the pretense of probable cause. After all, they’ll say, if you haven’t got anything to hide, what are you worried about?
Well, for openers, how about the entirely reasonable aversion to your information being accessible by private companies who probably monetize it? That is to say, make money off your information – without you getting any of the money that’s made. Late-model “connected” cars mine your information – styled “data,” to make it sound like it’s just numbers rather than information about your personal habits and preferences, which aren’t properly anyone else’s business. But it’s very good business – for the private companies that “monetize” your information.
Usually without your consent or even your knowledge.
This business with the license plates – and the information tied into them – is creepy on another level, as well. Your vehicle’s license plate is no longer just a kind of tin-plate ear tag like the ones used to keep track of cattle in the field. That is to say, it’s not just a number (cue The Prisoner, again). It is more like a bar code in that it can be – and is being – scanned, just like the bar codes on the food you buy at the grocery store.
Except it’s not just at the grocery store – when it comes to your plates – which get scanned every time your vehicle drives past an automated license plate reader (ALPR). These are mounted on cop cars as well as traffic lights and can be used to keep track of your vehicle’s movements – but it’s more (and worse) than just that. The ALPRs can be used to alert cops to your vehicle – and so, to you – by “flagging” it (and you) for any reason the government decides to “flag” your vehicle (and so, you) for. Maybe you didn’t pay a traffic fine; maybe your plates are out of date.
Maybe the government has decreed that you’ve been driving too much – and your “carbon footprint” is too large. That hasn’t happened yet, but the capability is implicit in the technology as well as the invasion of privacy.
Which brings us full circle back to Edmunds – which has become very much like the insurance mafia in that these (and other) private companies have gotten access to our information, which we no longer have control over. It has happened because the wall of separation that used to exist between the government and private companies not only has been breached, for all practical purposes, it no longer exists. The reason why is because it was allowed. Not enough of us refused to accept the insurance mafia being empowered to access our information by the government and – that precedent having been accepted – it has been expanded and normalized.
To such an extent that now even used car value guides have our information – and there’s precious little we can do about.
Which creeps me out.
. . .
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Eric,
I’m not sure what info Edmonds has access to, but here at my shop, the vendors that I use for ordering parts, allow me to find what I need via the VIN or license plate number. When I type in the license plate number I get the VIN. I don’t get any other info of the customer, just the car. These days working on cars you need the VIN to get the right parts. There are VW Jetta’s that have four different front brake pads for the same model year car. Ask your friend Graves, he probably uses some of the same vendors I use.
Something else that’s creepy. This concerns your house, not cars. In 2008, I encountered a woman working for the Census Bureau, doing advance work for the 2010 census. She had to walk down my long driveway to take the GPS coordinates of my front door. I recently had to verify my address on a website, and it showed GPS coordinates with 4 digits after the decimal point. That has to be where it came from. I’ve never seen anything that precise. So now they can direct killer drones or directed energy weapons to your front door.
This isn’t all that new. In the late 1990s Progressive and Geico were immediately able to access information about the vehicles I had then when I called each on the phone for rate quotes to compare with the auto-insurance company I had. This was before their websites, when their radio and TV ads said to call for quotes and “save money”. But the info was available to them online even then.
Interestingly, both quoted about $100 more for six months’ coverage than I was paying, or about 20% more.
Carfax will give you the number of records and base the value of your vehicle, guess it’s condition based on the number of records available for the car. i have 41 on my 2012 Acura TL. It guess my mileage as 216,000. It’s actually 220k The condition is GOOD.
It’s great, isn’t it.
Right now, needs a tug on the suspesnsion to see why it clanks over bumps. I’m actually suspecting the sway bar bushings instead of the normal suspects. I’m gonna try installing them first.
Oh, damn!
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/hyundai-owner-finds-out-his-car-has-been-snitching-on-him-gives-up-on-the-brand-234787.html
Another way to get slaves out of their cars…
The government will be going after modified cars…..only factory stock cars will be allowed on the road….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QrqPvwtOU8
Amazon recently asked for our plate number while looking up truck parts. No way.. ever!
Wife ordered a pair of boots from a company called Pleaser. Now we are getting emails from this company showing large photos of gay men dressed up in girls dresses and shoes etc. Totally disgusting and unacceptable! What if our kids are exposed to this mentally sick content?
These sickos (bankers) paying for all this evil with their counterfeit printing press money are really pushing their luck. I know a lot of people including us who have had enough of this garbage. That co has now been blocked from our email and we will never do business with them again. Not just them, a few others also on our black list. Currently weaning our way off of Amazon as they have been pushing this queer crap also.
Yep, here ya go! Now I know what those gray boxed cameras on the traffic signal light bars are up to: (I’m near a small town it has about a four block business district)
https://www.openalpr.com/
It is not only Edmunds. There is some service or services out there that state governments are selling our data to. I’ve seen enter VIN or Plate Number in a few places online. And there’s only one way a plate number can get to the particulars of a car and that is the state govts sold the relationship between the plates and the VINs. VIN decoders are of no issue and have been around forever. They don’t even need the last few digits that are serial number of the car, only the first half or so that are the particulars.
States sell drivers license data all the time, have for years. It is not private.
I would not be at all surprised if they do the same thing with car registrations, for the exact same reason.
We need to put a crimp into this idea of having dossiers on everybody.
Don’t collect it, and don’t sell it. Needs to be a constitutional amendment.
This is the reason I never gave any correct information when it came to the Government or Companies working with the Government. I still don’t but it’s much easier since I left the States. It’s not a lie if you don’t tell these people the truth. It’s getting even.
You are either a sovereign or a slave….
slaves need permission sovereign’s do not….
@ 15:30 in video CO2
@ 26:30 in video…..The government’s fake authority is based on people’s fear, trepidation and ignorance….
@ 27:00 in video…David Adelman has a solution for the tyranny in our schools..
FEAR is an acronym….. False Evidence Appearing Real
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyy1WDhv_F4
I did that, filled out the information to find out how much my vehicle is worth.
Wasn’t much, not going to sell at the price quoted, it won’t happen.
It was maybe at Carfax to find out how much.
I also wanted to get an insurance quote on a vehicle, all I wanted was to see a number on the computer screen. Next thing you know, the phone is ringing one call after another from insurance agents wanting to sell a policy. The buzzards circle immediately.
You had to give them all of the information about the vehicle and you before they would quote a price.
Not interested, so leave me alone.
Sadly, Ken, I think Snowden is correct. How long have Americans been getting molested and ripped off via the TSA in the name of “saaafety” (since 9/11), naked body scanners, and no one says a word? And it has only grown worse since then. Where is the right to be left alone? Also, this article reminded me of Rockwell & Michael Jackson in their song “Somebody’s Watching Me”. How ironic, the song came out in…1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY
Here your mileage gets recorded each year when you have to get your saaaaafety inspection, that info gets passed on to the DMV and the insurance mafia. The DMV also generously passes on your drivers license photo to the FBI and God knows how many other govco agencies for facial recognition purposes. I don’t recall being asked for permission to do this, and would most likely be greeted with laughter if I tried to opt out. I’m due for a license renewal and new picture next month and considering growing a heavy beard for said pic, then shaving it off afterwards.
It’s not a solution, but it’s an appropriate response. Don’t use them anymore once you find it out. I have not used Edmonds for a decade or more, since I picked up a rather nasty computer virus from their site.
Sort of like the old remedy for cockroaches. Don’t feed them! But then again, cockroaches don’t hold a gun to your head like government does. Neither does Edmonds.
If something is free, you are the product.
On a lighter note, two young guys restore a Model T. As a joke they take it to a local Ford dealer for an oil change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vKDKC_8ncQ
That boosted my spirits! Thanks for that video!
Eric,
I don’t know if Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book necessarily tap into our cars for the mileage info. When you look up your car’s value on these sites, they ask you a bunch of questions about equipment, trim level, and so on; one of those questions is mileage. If you make multiple visits to these sites, you’ll enter your mileage multiple times. From there, the sites can make a good guess about how many miles you’re driving.
The sites have a provision for entering your VIN; from there, they could possibly tie into DMV computers.
Here’s another test. Go to an insurance website and get a quote.
Put in your driver license # and they will tell you the cars you own.
I think this also works if you use your name and address on some sites.
Should not be a surprise that big business is granted access to big brother’s databases.
Information sharing is how we are influenced and controlled.
This is why “mis/disinformation” is so important to the Borg.
Every piece of tech that makes your life better will also be coopted to be used against you.
My car failed a rust recall (or so the dealer says). The dealer didn’t want to release it back to me and manufacturer was very eager to buy it back. They pestered me with fedexed letters and calls for months. I fixed it myself. Stronger than new. Fuggem!
I’m sure the conveyance is flagged on sites like carfacks for being “unsafe” and I have another tab in my antisocial credit file for noncompliance.
Another one saved… Don’t let them crush our oldies but goodies. Welders and junkyard parts are CHEAP!
Remember 1978? That’s when The Rockford Files episode “The House on Willis Avenue” aired. It was about a private company that specialized in collecting information on people. It was international in scope. At the end of the episode the following was presented before the closing credits:
“Secret information centers, building dossiers on individuals exist today. You have no legal right to know about them, prevent them, or sue for damages. Our liberty may well be the price we pay for permitting this to continue unchecked. Member, U.S. Privacy Protection Commission”
This business has only grown exponentially. Whether it’s the NSA mega-site in Utah collecting every key stroke (aka One Stop Shopping for Hackers) or that innocuous building out in the country that has no signage but, is a Facebook “data” center, we are being watched, monitored and recorded by all kinds of sociopaths.
It used to be a sickness, if not a criminal act, to want to know every aspect of the lives of others. Now it’s a business plan and way of running a society but, it’s still a sickness.
Indeed, Mark –
This lust to know things about us is pathological. Most people used to revile busybodies. Now most people are busybodies – or so it seems.
Hi Eric,
I’m not sure most people are busybodies, it’s just that the busybodies(sociopaths) rise to levels of authority due to their amoral personalities. They have a willingness to throw their own mother under the bus, if needed. (It reminds me of the scene in the original Star Trek where the shyster Harry Mudd tells Spock, “You couldn’t sell fake patents to your mother.” to which Spock replies, “Why would I endeavor to sell false patents to my mother?”) Or more to the point, the study of the Psychopath in the Corner Office, or in GovCo…
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsvudkf0kpf5r4kkaosg/portfolio/the-psychopath-in-the-corner-office
Hey Eric – I’ve heard that they’ve just put in a quite a few of these “data centers” around the northern VA area — Very large, sprawling buildings jammed with computer servers and stuff — and they’re putting them up all over the place around there. So much so that now Duke Energy will have to expand their generating capacity, since these things drink up gigawatts from the grid. Next time you happen to be out in that part of the world, I for one would very much appreciate an on-the-ground report. Thx…
LexisNexus knows all. Data mining has been going on now for decades. If one looks hard enough, they’re going to find their 6th grade report card from 1983.
It’s not a surprise all this information has been synthesized, but the greater question is who has access and with what will they do with it?
Nothing good Boyo 😳
Flip, it’s even worse because when there is inaccurate information on Lexis Nexus there is no procedure, that I can find, to correct it!
There’s a lot of “free” stuff on the Internet. Nothing is free. In this case, what Edmunds is marketing is your data.
Couple the commercial companies harvesting government data and the government storing everything we do in these massive data centers across the country, and big brother will have all sorts of information with which to charge us with crimes. My reply to this article is probably stored somewhere forever, and with a little bit of software they can figure out who I am, where I live, etc. Snowden revealed the extent of this illegal spying, and no one went to jail for it, and he fled the country.
Snowden left because he figured out no American cared. Many were actually employed in the business.
This “not caring” can be used to explain every instance of wrong in this crazed society. Check it out. When ‘parents find out how much garbage is fed to the children they love soooo much do they pull them from the school system? Have they demonstrated how much they dislike the TSA by not flying? According to the stats, this year surpassed all prior years in the number of people flying and the year isn’t even over yet. Watch how they smile and thumbs up their young ‘babies’ getting felt up.
Do ‘Parents care about the world they’re leaving for their beloved children ! I don’t think so ‘Tim”They fund their university costs which politicize them. Teach them debauchery. Teach them to love government that gives them a stolen piece of American Pie.
And their childrens children pass this not caring on to the next generations. Every night Snowden goes to sleep in a foreign land he probably wonders how it got like this in the land of the free and home of the brave.
It started with Doubleclick (dot) net. They were acquired by Google in 2008. They were the first online ad agency that figured out how to automatically place ads. They also started the real-time auction of views, very effective. When combined with Google’s dossier of pretty much anyone on the Internet, it is a powerful way to target specific viewers.
But who to send your ad to? Well, marketing types build up an idealized customer for the product, based mostly on hunches and who they would like to be seen using the product or service. Then they ask the agency to place ads with people who come close to matching their fantasy customer. And as it works, or fails, the agency refines their ideal. Or they widen their potential audience. Either way they meddle with the system to gain advantage.
Then on the Google/Adsense side, the programmers are always playing with the algorithms and gathering even more data, mostly because someone requested an audience with certain characteristics. If one person asks, then maybe more people want that data point too. Then the programmers start to anticipate marketing desires, and then Katie bar the door. Soon information no one wanted is being gathered for no reason other than “just in case.”
All’s fair I suppose, until there a subpoena from the FBI. They just grab all the data they can, then start sifting through looking for clues. And unlike the data presented to advertisers, this isn’t autonomized.