Jump to content

Toyota Vehicle Telemetry

From Consumer_Action_Taskforce
Revision as of 15:47, 29 January 2025 by Dreadhawk177 (talk | contribs) (Forgive me, I don't know how to put this as an 'Incident' under the Toyota company page. Also don't know how to mark it as a stub)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

So this is mostly anecdotal and I don't have solid evidence for an incident page, but I got a new 2022 Prius Prime a couple years ago and there's a small red sticker stating:

Sticker in new 2022 Toyota Prius Prime stating "VEHICLE DATA TRANSMISSION IS ON Your vehicle wirelessly transmits location, driving and vehicle health data to deliver your services and for internal research and data analysis. See www.toyota.com/privacyvts. To disable, press vehicle's SOS button. TO BE REMOVED BY OWNER ONLY"
Sticker in new 2022 Toyota Prius Prime

"VEHICLE DATA TRANSMISSION IS ON Your vehicle wirelessly transmits location, driving and vehicle health data to deliver your services and for internal research and data analysis. See www.toyota.com/privacyvts. To disable, press vehicle's SOS button. TO BE REMOVED BY OWNER ONLY"

Naturally, I hit the SOS button to disable any telemetry. I'd consistently get someone on the (car)phone who would essentially confirm I wasn't in an emergency, and when asked about the sticker and turning off data collection, they'd forward the call to support for a car app, something I didn't have (you had to pay monthly for it).

I probably called the SOS button 5-10 times over the next 6 months (often nothing better to do on long drives), with similar results. At one point someone said to reach out to the dealer. Lol. So next free service I had, I asked about it, and they referred to me corporate. I gave up after that, but obviously turning off telemetry wasn't as simple as hitting the SOS button and asking..