How to Keep Your Car From Spying on You
New features on cars and phone apps can track where you go, when and how fast—among many other things. Here’s what to do about it.
3 min
Your car is watching you. What can you do to stop it?
Many vehicles today and their related phone apps are packed with safety and convenience features, including digital maps, navigation linked to GPS and the internet, remote starting and vehicle locaters to find your car in a crowded parking lot. Many also have microphones for voice control and some have cameras that detect who is driving to adjust things such as the seat.
But those features and others can have a dark side: Many can track where you go and when, how fast you drive and how hard you brake, where you park and spend time, even what music or podcasts you listen to. Such information can be a gold mine for marketers and insurers—and a target for hackers.
Privacy researchers say car buyers may not realise they agree to have such data collected by the automaker when they sign the papers for a new vehicle or use the carmaker’s phone app.
The Mozilla Foundation, a technology-focused nonprofit, examined the privacy practices of 25 car brands. Its conclusion: “These are the worst of any category we’ve reviewed,” says Jen Caltrider, director of the group’s Privacy Not Included program. Among its findings are that most carmakers collect personal information, give customers little control over it, and may sell or share it with others.
Privacy experts say they also are concerned about provisions in car-maker privacy policies that allow them to share driver information with law-enforcement authorities under certain circumstances—sometimes without a warrant.
On May 14, the Federal Trade Commission told vehicle makers that it was monitoring their actions regarding car data. “Cars are much like mobile phones when it comes to revealing consumers’ persistent, precise location,” the agency said in a blog post. It added that companies “do not have the free license to monetise people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service….”
The industry response
The car industry says that the combination of vehicle data monitoring, GPS and wireless communication—a field known as telematics—provides important features, some of them safety-related. Some systems can detect when you’ve been in an accident and call emergency services, or locate a car if it’s stolen. They can help you avoid a traffic jam or potential road hazards. Cars also can give you maintenance reminders, such as when a vehicle needs an oil change or new tires, and allow the carmaker to track the durability and function of certain components for future improvements.
A vehicle-industry trade group in 2014 issued voluntary guidelines for the collection and use of car data. The group, now called the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, says its members should give car owners and lessees choice in the “collection, use and sharing” of certain information and that this information should be collected “only as needed for legitimate business purposes.”
Some privacy groups, however, say the voluntary guidelines aren’t specific enough and aren’t always followed.
“It seems like an empty promise,” says Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy expert with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Car companies are becoming tech companies. Self-policing hasn’t been shown in other tech industries to be a reliable way for companies to operate.”
What is needed, according to these experts, is a federal privacy-protection law along the lines of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. The car industry, for its part, also backs a federal privacy law , in part to have a nationwide standard as a number of states have adopted their own, differing laws.
Most carmakers issue their own lengthy privacy policies stating how they collect and disseminate car data. Some state that they can share or sell the information to third parties including marketers if the car owner agrees to it.
Among the six biggest sellers of vehicles in the U.S., Ford Motor says customers can turn off data and location sharing with the company. It says it “doesn’t sell any connected-vehicle data to brokers, period.” General Motors says it is “fostering trust through responsible data practices, enhanced user controls and clear benefits for customers.” Toyota says it gives customers “transparency and choice” in how vehicle data is collected and used and that they can “turn off all data transmission.”
Stellantis, owner of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, says any data it collects “is in accordance with applicable state privacy laws . Accordingly, Stellantis provides customers with a way to opt out of data collection.” Honda says it is “very clear about what we collect and how our owners can opt out” and “when we might share collected data with third parties.” Hyundai declined to comment and deferred to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation for a response.
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As tariffs bite, Sydney’s MAISON de SABRÉ is pushing deeper into the US, holding firm on pricing and proving that resilience in luxury means more than survival.
Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
Can its real-estate market continue to rise amid stock-market turmoil?
7 min
MANALAPAN, FLA.— The Deal-Closer. That’s what real-estate agent Jack Elkins jokingly calls the Hinckley picnic boat he docks on the Intracoastal Waterway in the Florida community of Manalapan.
From the road, many of Manalapan’s mansions are shrouded by plantings and foliage, but they are clearly visible from the water, Elkins explained. A boat ride is often the best way to show properties to the wealthy buyers now flocking to the tiny town.
On a recent afternoon, Elkins cruised down the Intracoastal in the The Deal-Closer, passing mansion after mansion, most with their own docks. “When I was a little kid, almost all of this was jungle,” said Elkins, 46, who spent much of his childhood in the area. “There were foxes and parrots and all these wild animals.”
Manalapan, a roughly 2.4-square-mile town with a population of about 400, is just south of glitzier Palm Beach.
While Manalapan has long drawn moneyed residents such as the singer Billy Joel, it has historically lacked the prestige—and price tags—of Palm Beach. That has changed dramatically over the past five years, however, thanks to a series of major home sales.
In 2022, for example, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison paid $173 million for a historic Manalapan estate. And David MacNeil, the founder of the automotive-accessories manufacturer WeatherTech, has spent a combined $94 million over the past year on a pair of neighboring sites, with plans to build a megamansion there.
“People like Larry Ellison and David MacNeil, these individuals can afford to buy real estate anywhere in the world,” said local real-estate agent Nick Malinosky of Douglas Elliman . “Manalapan is not a second choice for them. It’s their first choice.”
On South Ocean Boulevard, Manalapan’s most affluent corridor, about 21 homes have traded for more than $20 million each since 2020. At least six have sold for $40 million or more, up from only one in that price range during the previous five years.
In 2021, eBay billionaire Jeffrey Skoll bought an ocean-to-Intracoastal estate for $89.93 million, while Joel’s longtime home sold last year for $42.6 million.
Now, however, it is unclear whether Manalapan’s hot streak can continue. Like luxury markets across the country, the town is contending with stock-market turmoil and the fallout from President Trump’s tariffs.
Like many Manalapan residents, local developer Stewart Satter, who is listing a yet-to-be-built spec home for $285 million, is a Trump supporter. During the 2024 election, Satter flew a giant Trump flag above the site.
But tariffs have “created a tremendous amount of uncertainty at the minimum, and that is not good for business,” Satter said. “It’s not good for real estate. People say, ‘Let’s wait. We’re not going to buy a house, we’re not going to build a house.’”
Hitting the big time
Elkins’ cuddly Native American Indian Dog, Bear, lounged on The Deal-Closer’s blue-and-white-striped seats as the boat zipped along the Intracoastal, passing glassy modern mansions and traditional Mediterranean estates.
To catch a glimpse of Ellison’s roughly 16-acre oceanfront estate, Elkins guided the Hinckley through the Boynton Inlet into the choppy Atlantic, where the sandy beach in front of Ellison’s property was visible.
Known as Gemini, the gargantuan mansion was once owned by the late publishing magnate William B. Ziff Jr., who brought in large plantings and trees from South America for the landscaping.
“When I was a little kid, barges were going by our house with these huge trees,” Elkins recalled.
Ellison has approved plans to add more homes to the estate. He also paid about $277 million last year for Manalapan’s Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, home to the members-only La Coquille Club, and talk is rife about how Ellison might upgrade the property. Ellison didn’t respond to requests for comment.
It’s a strange feeling, Elkins said, to see Manalapan hit the big time.
Before Covid, the town was often confused with its namesake: Manalapan, N.J. Tiny compared with Palm Beach, Manalapan developed much more slowly than its famous neighbour. It lacks the commercial infrastructure of Palm Beach, and its low-density zoning has kept it largely free of major condos or resorts.
When Satter, the developer, bought four empty lots in Manalapan in 2005, parts of the town looked like “just a mess of woods,” said his wife, Susan Satter. “I said, ‘Is this really how we want to invest our money?’”
Over the next decade, her husband built spec homes on three of the lots and sold them for a significant profit. He kept one, building a mansion there for himself and his wife.
“I thought I’d discovered a really special place,” said Stewart, who tested products for Walmart before turning to spec-home development. “If I had known what was going to happen, obviously, in the rear view mirror, I would have bought the whole town.”
The buyers of Satter’s projects include Ron and Cindy McMackin, who paid roughly $39 million in 2020 for a roughly 15,500-square-foot waterfront house with six bedrooms, then expanded it.
The couple, founders of the mechanical subcontracting company Pan-Pacific Mechanical, had relocated from Hawaii to South Florida during COVID.
“We knew nothing about Manalapan when we moved here,” said Ron, 78. He and Cindy were in the process of moving into a Palm Beach property they owned when their real-estate agent, Lawrence Moens , called. The actor Sylvester Stallone was searching for a home amid the Covid-induced real-estate frenzy, and wanted to see their house.
Before they knew it, they had agreed to sell to the “Rocky” star for $35.375 million, 33% more than the $26.65 million they had paid two years earlier.
This left them without a house. It was slim pickings in Palm Beach, and with five children, they needed plenty of space. Moens suggested Manalapan. At the time, the less-flashy choice was surprising to some of their Palm Beach friends. “I did hear a couple of times from people after that, ‘Why would Lawrence take the McMackins to Manalapan?’” said Ron.
But the McMackins love that it is quieter than Palm Beach, with less traffic. The couple have Sunday dinners with their neighbours, and Cindy has a small group of girlfriends who call themselves the “Manalapan mafia.” The McMackins like it so much that they are building a new, larger home along the same stretch.
Food-service entrepreneur Bob Carlucci and his wife, Aileen Carlucci, paid $11.63 million in 2020 for a roughly 13,000-square-foot Manalapan mansion on the Intracoastal, with a small beach house on the ocean. They are happy to have “discovered Manalapan early, ” Bob said.
Many buyers are tearing down older homes to build new mansions, Malinosky said. Before COVID, Manalapan was seen as more of a vacation destination, so buyers weren’t as choosy. Now that many are seeking full-time homes, however, “they want to make sure that it has the spa, it’s got the 12-car garage, it’s got the fitness centre, it’s got the wellness centre.”
Another prized amenity is a tunnel that runs underneath Highway A1A. Portions of the town are on a barrier island, and some homes sit on the ocean, requiring residents to cross the busy road to reach their docks on the Intracoastal.
Other estates are on the Intracoastal but have small beachhouses on the ocean. A tunnel allows residents to easily go from one side to the other.
Construction of these tunnels has become a rare point of contention between residents. In January, one couple asked the town commission to stop their neighbors from digging under the highway during the tourist season, claiming it was causing traffic to back up.
Building on the coast comes with challenges. Florida building code now requires roofs, windows and doors in high-risk areas to withstand winds of up to 170 miles an hour, according to builder Robert Burrage, who is building MacNeil’s home and four others in Manalapan.
Satter said the property insurance on his personal residence in Manalapan doesn’t include coverage for hurricane damage because it was too expensive. In addition to the annual premium, which was about $150,000 a year, he would have faced a deductible on hurricane damage of about 10% of the assessed value of the house.
He isn’t concerned with rising sea-levels, however. “When I bought my first oceanfront lot, my late father-in-law said, ‘What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know about global warming?’” Satter said. “I sold it at a huge number [in 2016] and made a lot of money. It’s been sold again and again and again—and the water hasn’t done anything.”
Stock market slide
Manalapan’s proximity to Mar-a-Lago has added to its popularity since Trump’s election to a second term, Malinosky said. Many residents support Trump. In the McMackins’ home, a bedazzled MAGA purse hangs in Cindy’s closet and a photo book in the living room shows her attending a Trump event at Mar-a-Lago, where they are members.
But the trade war and stock-market volatility have injected uncertainty into the real-estate market.
Until recently, Hamptons home builder Joe Farrell was considering paying more than $30 million for a building site in Manalapan, he said. He has decided to hold off on any acquisitions for now, however, because of the tariffs and resulting stock-market fallout.
“The market seems to still be pretty good, but people are maybe a little more cautious about parting ways with liquidity,” Farrell said. “I want to see things stabilize before I commit to that kind of capital outlay.”
Elkins said one of his clients considered backing out of a $10 million deal over the last few weeks on Point Manalapan, but decided to move ahead to avoid forfeiting the deposit.
Malinosky said he still sees significant demand for big-ticket properties in Manalapan, especially since many wealthy people are taking money out of the stock market. He said he has closed more than $150 million in deals in the greater Palm Beach area over the past two weeks.
Even with the uncertainty, “there is no shortage of buyers that will spend $100 million right now in Manalapan,” he said.
Shelly Newman, an agent with the Corcoran Group, said she recently sold a piece of land to a spec-home developer for $25 million. And the McMackins are moving ahead with plans to complete their new house, though tariffs have been “the talk of the town,” Ron said.
“I do have a stock portfolio and it is down,” he said. “But I don’t let that affect what I’m doing. We’re very fortunate with resources.”
While Satter agrees with efforts to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., he said he has been blindsided by the extent of the trade war. “I’m not sure about how they’re rolling it out,” he said.
A handful of potential buyers have expressed interest in his $285 million listing, he said, but he realizes the prospective buyer pool is tiny. “There are going to be three or four people who ultimately show real interest and have the capacity to pull the trigger,” he said.
Ultimately, he said he isn’t too worried about the prospects for sale, since he can afford to sit on the property long-term.
Still, real-estate agents said Satter’s property and others may be priced too aggressively, even without tariffs.
British hedge-fund billionaire Chris Rokos is listing his 3-acre Manalapan estate for $150 million, more than triple what he paid for it in 2017. And real-estate investor Vivian Dimond recently cut the price of a Manalapan home by $14.5 million, to $64.5 million. It’s been on the market since September 2024.
For some Manalapan residents, home values are beside the point. Bob and Aileen Carlucci, for example, have no intention of moving.
“We look at each other and we say. ‘This is it,’” Bob said. “You can’t get anything better, we don’t believe—in this country, at least.”
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