I was messing around with the Tesla's browser yesterday, as well as the alternate variant of it that can be accessed by clicking a link from within the youtube "app". I happened to jokingly go to Lyft's web-app, at ride.lyft.com, and was shocked to see it pinpoint my precise current location without giving me any sort of "share your location?" prompt. I then tested this in the normal Tesla browser to compare, which did ask me if I wanted to share my location, with an option (obviously) to refuse, as expected.
This seems to show that the youtube app in Teslas gives google our precise location, with no prompt, and no option to reject it. I know that google likely already gets some location data from the mapping, but at least that's (hopefully) not tied to an individual account, and serves a legitimate purpose. I can't remotely see any valid reason for the youtube app to need our location, let alone to continuously provide it to google without prompting the user! This is a major privacy concern, especially as Google is notorious for it's data mining for advertising, and users are encouraged to log into the youtube app.
It's unclear how much of the app's functionality was written or vetted by Tesla, I suspect Google might have snuck it in without Tesla knowing. I suspect I'm not the only one made very uncomfortable by this, hopefully someone can get the attention of Tesla to resolve this blatant privacy violation!
This seems to show that the youtube app in Teslas gives google our precise location, with no prompt, and no option to reject it. I know that google likely already gets some location data from the mapping, but at least that's (hopefully) not tied to an individual account, and serves a legitimate purpose. I can't remotely see any valid reason for the youtube app to need our location, let alone to continuously provide it to google without prompting the user! This is a major privacy concern, especially as Google is notorious for it's data mining for advertising, and users are encouraged to log into the youtube app.
It's unclear how much of the app's functionality was written or vetted by Tesla, I suspect Google might have snuck it in without Tesla knowing. I suspect I'm not the only one made very uncomfortable by this, hopefully someone can get the attention of Tesla to resolve this blatant privacy violation!
