Toyota

Oof....Toyota. As the most popular car brand in the world, we really hoped you would have better privacy practices and track records for respecting and protecting the huge amounts of personal information you say you can collect. Unfortunately, that is not what we found in our research. We're afraid Toyota's "Let's Go Places" slogan means they really want to tag along and learn all they can about you on the way.

Where to start with our concerns about Toyota's privacy practices? Maybe with the fact that Toyota promotes itself as very privacy friendly while doing too many things that are anything but. For example, on Toyota's Privacy Hub, they mention right off the top that they "play a key role in the development and adoption of the Automotive Consumer Privacy Protection Principles." This sounds great, right? Well, it does until you look at it more closely. Those privacy principles were created by the automakers themselves back in 2014 to show they were taking privacy seriously.

However, if you look closely, you'll see that Toyota, and nearly all the automakers we reviewed, don't actually follow their own principles for privacy. Those include things like "Data Minimization" (the idea they collected only what data is needed), "Data Security" (securing the data they do collect), "Transparency" (providing users clear, meaningful privacy information), and "Choice" (offering users choice in how their data use and collecting, and "Respect for Context" (using and sharing information only for what it was collected). Our research shows that Toyota (and pretty much every other car maker we reviewed who signed onto these principles) absolutely do not follow these promises at all. Toyota collects a ton of data -- way more than is likely necessary, they admit to sharing and even selling some of it with third parties for their own marketing purposes, they've had security lapses that put their users' personal information at risk, and they continue to expand their data collect to make more money off of the treasure trove of data they collect. Toyota isn't alone in this, but they are the ones bragging about playing a key role in setting up automotive privacy principles that they themselves don't seem to follow.

That being said, we do give Toyota a thumbs up for granting all people in the US, not just those covered by California's strong CCPA privacy law, the same rights to do things like have their data deleted or opt out of having some of their data sold. These are good rights that we feel should absolutely be granted to everyone, regardless of whether they live under stronger privacy laws like California's CCPA or the EU's GDPR. We can't confirm if Toyota grants everyone, everywhere the same rights to access, delete, and control their data though, which is not good. We would love to see them step up and clearly say they will do this.

We also give Toyota some bonus points for having a North American Privacy Hub where consumers can more easily track down some of the many privacy policies Toyota has that covers their cars, apps, connected services, and more. But this outlines another gripe we have with Toyota. There are so many privacy policies, notices, statements, etc for all of their cars, connected services, apps, on-board cameras, and more. Tracking them down was quite the task. We even learned that Toyota's app for managing their connected car service works with all their car brands -- except the Toyota Supra. Which has its own Toyota Supra Connect app that, interestingly, links to BMW's privacy policy. It's quite the complicated privacy scavenger hunt to track down all of Toyota's privacy documentation and make sense of it. We did our best, but it made our heads spins. Don't worry though, we found another Toyota slogan that applies here! "Imagine a world without limits"...on the number of privacy notices we expect people to read. Shoot, Toyota even admits in their EU privacy policy that their privacy policy landscape is quite complicated, "This Policy contains general rules and explanations. It is complemented with separate specific privacy notices relating to particular services, tools, applications, websites, portals, (online) sales promotions, marketing actions, sponsored social media platforms, etc. provided or operated by or on behalf of Toyota." Your head is probably spinning now too.

Toyota says they can collect a whole heap of personal information on you through your car, the Toyota app, and their connected services. This includes everything from personally identifying information such as name, address, phone number, email, online identifier, social media ID, and demographic information such as your age, to driving behavior such as acceleration and speed, steering, and breaking functionality, and travel direction, to lots of information about your car including VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), interior and exterior image data from cameras and sensors in your car, facial geometric features. They even can collect sensitive personal information such as precise geolocation data, biometric information. On top of all this, they say they can collect lots of information about you from other sources such as social media, public sources, data brokers, data providers, your friends, and more. Toyota is collecting a whole lot of information on you. Oh, and if you use any of those mobile services like SiriusXM radio, wi-fi connectivity, navigation, or even let your insurance track your usage, well, those places can all collect your personal information too.

So, what does Toyota say they can do with this treasure trove of information? Well, some of it they seem to treat responsibly. Like the facial geometric features they get when they scan your face to identify your for your driver profile they say will only be processed and stored on your car. That is good. Unfortunately, Toyota says they can do lots more with so much of all that other information they collect on you. For one, they say they can share or sell your personal information to third parties for targeted advertising purposes. Even worse, they don't 100% commit to not processing, or potentially even sharing, your sensitive personal information -- things like your precise geolocation data, biometric information for the purpose of uniquely identifying an individual, and financial information. In fact, they qualify the use of that sensitive information in ways that leave us uncomfortable. They say, "Where required by law, we will obtain your consent before processing your sensitive Personal Information. We will also generally use your sensitive Personal Information for limited purposes..." This vague, qualifying language about how they say they can handle and share your sensitive personal information does not leave us feeling good about Toyota's overall privacy practices.

Toyota's ecosystem of parent companies and affiliates, dealers and distributors is also vast. These include things like Toyota Financial Services and your local "dealer advertising associations." These are all places Toyota says they can share your personal information. We also found Toyota Connected Europe, which seems to be a Toyota-affiliated data business that uses all the vast amounts of data cars, car apps, and car mobile services can collect to develop better connected cars, understand driver behavior better, make cars safer (yay!), help drivers develop more energy efficient driving behavior, and more. Some of these things are very useful and beneficial to society. Some of them might not be. And remember, Toyota is in the business of selling more cars, and thus, collecting more data to sell more cars. Toyota Connected Europe describe data as follows: "It’s the lifeblood of our business and powers everything we do." We share this as a reminder that for car companies like Toyota, data is a huge and growing business as cars become ever more connected (Toyota Connected Europe describe themselves on their web page as a "young business".) Guess what, we've got another Toyota slogan that applies here! "You are what drives us." Another way of saying your data is what drives our business (to be fair, data is what drives most businesses these days…unfortunately for privacy it's the way the world now works).

Toyota does love their slogans. They say, Peace of mind comes standard. Well, maybe not so much when it comes to their track record of protecting and respecting all that personal information they collect. They have a couple of serious security lapses over the past few years that raise eyebrows. In May, 2023 Toyota admitted that it had left the location data of over 2 million Toyota and Lexus users exposed and unsecured for ten years. A couple weeks later, Toyota again admitted it left the data of another 260,000 car owners exposed in a different security incident. And back in 2020, security researchers found flaws in the encryption for the car keys that let drivers start their cars in Toyota vehicles. Hyundai and Kia car keys were also found to have the same flaws. These security and privacy oopsies on Toyota's part don't exactly give us a lot of peace of mind that they truly understand what it takes to protect all that information they are collecting on us as we drive their cars. In fact, they themselves warn in their Connected Services privacy policy, "Please note, however, that we cannot completely ensure or warrant the security of any information transmitted to us by you or your vehicle. Your use of your vehicle’s Connected Services and App Suite is at your own risk." Is that what Toyota was going for with their slogan. "The power of choice is yours"? Probably not, but it works!

What's the worst that could happen in your Toyota car with Toyota's app and Connected Services and on-board cameras sharing data with their parent companies, business affiliate, car dealers, third party advertisers, and more? Well, Toyota could know everywhere you drive (they probably do) and know where you like to shop and when and then you could have "relevant to your location" ads follow you all around targeting you to buy more stuff. That could be OK. It also could suck if you're trying to drink less alcohol and every time you drive near a liquor store you get an ad for beer. OK, maybe that's not the worst things that could happen. We can actually think of many worse things. But this is something that could way too easily happen and it is bad enough. Hey Toyota, maybe we can ask you to be "Inspired by what's possible" and collect way less personal information on your car owners and give people more of an ability to protect their privacy when driving your cars. Now that would be privacy "Built for how you live." Unfortunately we have a slogan of our own for Toyota: *Privacy Not Included.