TomTom shops you for speeding

[FridgeFreezer]

Linky: http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/160861/tom-toms-sleazy-way-make-gps-revenue-shortfall

Albeit in a slightly roundabout way:

TomTom NV, Europe's largest navigation device maker, went into damage control mode Wednesday after it emerged that Dutch police have been using data collected from drivers who use the company's products to set speed traps.

Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues, including selling traffic data to governments.

[Les Henson]

Oh dear

It's also possible to access a vehicles ECU and gather data about speeds, etc, though I doubt the Police would usually go quite that far.

Les.

[M&S]

To be honest who DIDN'T see that coming

[inaine]

this'll be the same thing then

http://www.coverbox.co.uk/

[UdderlyOffroad]

To be clear, it was anonymised data, not individual drivers' name, rank & serial number. How long before UK "safety camera partnerships" start breaking out their chequebooks?

Looks like I'll be carefully checking precisely what options I have ticked on my Tomtom's PC-based update program!

[Retroanaconda]

Time to break out the tinfoil hat I think!

[wack61]

The UK is one of the few countries that opted out of allowing the use of tachograph data in speeding prosecutions, as a tachograph is a calibrated instrument it can be used as evidence in court which they do use in other European countries.

In the UK it's only used as secondary evidence, if they don't use tachograph data I can't see them using tomtom data here

[bishbosh]

Where's the problem? You break the speed limit, you get caught, you pay up and get the points.

If you think the speed limit is wrong then campaign for it to be changed, don't ignore it.

[UdderlyOffroad]

Bishbosh, this isn't about the rights or wrongs of speed cameras, it's about the data TomTom users have supplied being used for purposes other than was advertised; a data protection issue in other words.

To be fair, this thread's title is a little alarmist, but then the upshot of that is that it made me to read it+research it myself.

[LR90]

What about this one:

insurers-monitor-your-driving-performance

[Range Rover Blues]

"well officer, the car wasn't speeding, but when I threw the satnav away in frustration........."

Almost impossible to prove who was at the wheel when the offence occured, unless like with littering they proose to make the owner responsible errespective of who comits the crime.

Wouldn't be so bad if the data in tomTom was accurate!

[simonr]

Where's the problem? You break the speed limit, you get caught, you pay up and get the points.

If you've done nothing wrong - you've got nothing to fear from a total surveillance society!

After all, technology is infallible - as are the legal and judicial system?

The logical conclusion is to have a data connection to your sat-nav which shops you for every minor traffic law violation.

I'm not convinced that total surveillance and immediate electronic prosecution actually make society a better place. It makes people feel boxed in which can in turn lead to civil unrest.

I do not wittingly speed - but like most people I have probably not always slowed down in time for a speed limit change - crossing the line a couple of mph too fast. I have similarly driven at the wrong speed when I have assumed the speed limit to be different and not yet passed a sign. These are the kinds of things people do unwittingly all the time - even if it is not their intent to break the law. Likewise, these are the kind of thing that do not serve society to prosecute.

We seem to be running headlong into a world where human fallibility & forgetfulness are not tolerated. A world of instant spot fines for things which result from the very characteristics that differentiate Humans from machines!

Si

[wack61]

Where's the problem? You break the speed limit, you get caught, you pay up and get the points.

If you think the speed limit is wrong then campaign for it to be changed, don't ignore it.

How do you get a council to change speed limits, where I live there's a road that has a footpath it's entire length which is a 60mph limit, cars use it as a race track because it's dead straight, on a sunday afternoon I can hear the bikes go down it, 80-90-100 hit the brakes, round the roundabout and then back

1/2 a miles away, similar road, no footpath 30mph

I spotted a council official in town when they bought a 20mph limit in, they had a radar gun and were pulling people up and warning them the limit had been dropped.

I saw my chance and asked him why this road had such a high limit in the middle of a residential area, his answer was they would only alter the limit if the accident data determined a change was needed, so when one of these 100mph bikes kills someone they might consider changing it.

Laws aren't always right

Smoking, make cigarettes £8 a pack to put people off and lower the NHS bill, problem is everybody starts smoking knockoff fags that have god knows what in them.

Traffic lights on every corner to make the roads safer so people get cheesed off with being stopped every 100m and jump them

[JJB Serenity]

ha ha I'm so paranoid that quite often I will switch off my iPhone's location services when driving. Not because I break the law but because I don't want people to know where I have been or where I am going. I like to remain as anonymous as possible!

[bishbosh]

How do you get a council to change speed limits,.......

As you have discovered, it will often boil down to accident stats, but if enough people (local residents) ask for it to be changed then the council should consider it. As for the bikers, it doesn't matter what the speed limit is, they'll still ignore it. That is one for the Police. I have the same issue round here - drag racing between roundabouts.

and before any bikers get all defensive, there are also plenty of Corsa chavs doing it OK? Is that all motorists covered?

[western]

don't bother using a satnav, use paper maps instead, a paper map can't shop you for speeding.

[hobson]

Lets face it, as technology and processing speed improve, we'll all be monitered and analyzed more and more, wether for crime prevention/prosecution, advertising or government statistics.

It's one of those things we all moan about and then accept, take the reports last year (i think) of Menwith Hill getting new teraflop supercomputers to allow them to listen to, and analyze every single phone call made in the uk, people moaned about civil liberties but it's now forgotten and we all put up with it.

I can see both sides of the argument for 'big brother' there are pro's and con's, and really, unless we all stop wanting new smartphones, satnavs, tablet pc's, netbooks etc then the technology available will be used to monitor us, for good or bad reasons.

At the end of the day they've been doing it since the fifties with Echelon.

I think regading the OP, i'd be surprised if a lot of the satnav companies aren't doing that, and anyway, give it another ten years and i reckon all cars will be monitered automatically for speed, in fact, there was a product in development which does exactly that, you have it fitted, allow it to monintor your speed and driving and get a huge insurance reduction for driving sensibly...

Good idea or not? depends how heavy your right foot is!

[Guest]

If you are really that worried about all of this guys you will not be able to buy a car after 2015 as it becomes a legal requirement that all cars will have a Machine to Machine (M2M) Telematics chip (SIM) embedded into the ECU by European law so that emergency assistance can be summoned in case you have an accident and need to summon assistance something that has already been introduced in the US. As the SIM is becoming a legal requirement most car makers are exploring ways of expanding customer service by allowing the SIM to automatically book the car in for a service etc, but also allow information to be feed to insurance companies to allow pay as you drive schemes.

However you will also have to stop using the web give up your mobile phone and other Tech stop using credit and debit cards, any store or reward cards and significantly change your appearance every time you visit a major shopping centre you will also have to stop driving as most major UK roads are now fitted with ANPR cameras, I am not paranoid I work in this field and know that all of this tech has been used for years.

Mobile companies already sell movement data to people like Tom Tom which allows them to enhance their active traffic management as we know how quickly people move through a cell area the data is anonymous very much like the Tom Tom information and customer specific location information will only be provided via a warrant I can't see this changing and to allow you to benefit you will have to opt in.

Shops/Shopping centres have been using CCTV and motion sensors and face reconnection for years to track how people move through an area what they buy and what they have looked at matching all the data to assess the demographic of the people using the shop and allowing them to alter their marketing and shop layout accordingly, why do you think shops offer reward points!! the information they gather is worth far more than the cost of running the scheme, especially when you expand the scheme to other outlets petrol stations etc,that information then becomes even more valuable as you really start to build up a picture of the person and their activity spending habits etc even tying this into events, you see that someone buys food for a picnic, drives near an area, and then later that day fills up again or buys food on the way back you start to build a picture that they could have have gone to that event, this is why you get asked for your card even for small purchases.

Big brother has been watching for years now, as computers become more powerful the value of this information increases not just financial value but the accurateness of the information and the ability to link disparate systems together, why do you think apple collect this information? it allows them to better target their marketing towards you, but can also be used as a renew stream to demographically profile it's users, credit card companies/banks us the tech for anti fraud programs to help protect them.

Personally I am not worried about the TomTom news as it has been going on for years with many different tech fields, the information is stripped of any information that would allow a prosecution there is a huge leap between the two and the law actually does protect us from this leap.

Jason.