Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
It’s a two-fer!
First, Tesla got dinged for- wait for it- privately and illegally accessing drivers vehicle videos, and sharing them internally in the company’s chat tool to make fun of their own customers. The Tesla TOS claim that user privacy “is and always will be enormously important to us.” This is of course, complete garbage.
It had been also been happening for years, with employees basically laughing at people being upset, saying that people should have expected it. The videos included such things as users being dragged by their vehicles, and one of a car hitting a child riding a bike. Yep. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m expecting my car’s company to be using as a meme for a laugh. Elon Musk predictably had no comment, most likely because he was too busy enjoying the memes.
Next up, an online alcohol recovery company called Monument admitted to sharing personally identifiable data with advertisers. This PII included names, DOB, email and physical addresses, their insurance information, photos, appointment information, and the survey responses submitted by the patients.
Monument is calling this a ‘breach’ that happened because of ‘third party tracking systems.’ Which of course is preposterous. The ‘breach’ has been happening since 2020. This was negligence at best, and willful and cynical abuse of confidence for people who are struggling at worst. To make matters worser-er, they bought another, similar company, that had been doing the EXACT SAME THING since 2017.
When is it that we’re going to get that Data Privacy Bill of Rights, again, exactly? [Ed.- You’re adorable.]