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Toyota Vehicle Telemetry

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Revision as of 13:26, 30 January 2025 by Kostas (talk | contribs) (add notice)

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So this is mostly anecdotal and I don't have solid evidence for an incident page (but maybe others do or would want to reproduce/investigate), 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..

Following Up with User Data Request

Later (~2023), I read up on the privacy policy as linked in the sticker, and looked for options to A) stop data collection and B) get a copy of all data collected so far. It was a long and somewhat painful process going through their website, following requests from stage to stage, etc. I ended up getting a long but mostly boring pdf with info such as my address, VIN, purchase info. Nothing particularly scary, but the location data was stated as withheld due to privacy issues. I called a number and got hold of a team specifically for those requests. They told me they couldn't give me location data from my car because it might expose the privacy of passengers. I assured them nobody had been a passenger in that car, and was willing to write a legal statement to that effect. Nope, still not willing. That's how that ended. They have no problems collecting info on said passengers without any form of consent, but couldn't hand it over to me.