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Comment by sbierwagen | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: oil change places sell your odometer reading to your car insurer, who may increase your rates if you drove more miles than you said you would: https://splinternews.com/how-car-insurance-companies-spy-on-...

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Worse than that, if they get lazy and misreport your mileage a few times your car can get flagged as having miles rolled back. Which will destroy its resale value.

I've got caught by this, took some explaining to straighten out. I always have my on board computer set to display distance in kilometres, but I live in UK - and once, a technician logged my mileage using the value in kilometres, but for the next service they switched to miles - and I got some questions from Mercedes how come my mileage went down between visits to the garage.

the scary thing is that they didn't figure it out themselves

but if they did just make the assumption that any odometer reading that was off by 0.62 must have been a km->mi error, couldn't someone attempting to rollback an odometer just always make sure it was rolled back to 0.62 x the number of units driven?

The issue is obviously that the two readings were not taken at the same time, and the technician does not have a field for the unit - just for the value. So let's say he typed in 20,000(in kilometres, so about ~12k miles), then I drove another 5000km, so the next reading taken was 15,000(in miles). So all they could see on their system was my odometer going down by 5000 "units" - it's impossible to work out from this that the mileage was taken in different units each time.

Right - that was my point to the parent who said "it's scary they [Mercedes] didn't figure that out" (that there was a unit change, and thus proceeded down the road of "must have been a rollback"). I was trying to get across that simply making the assumption that mileage going down implies a kilometers-to-miles conversion in reading is ripe for abuse, and so Mercedes would have to assume a rollback first and investigate.

Point taken, but they first could have investigated a unit mixup before assuming fraud. Or they could always track mileage with explicit units, not assuming a default.

For curiosity's sake, if you're interested you can see how often mileage is reported incorrectly by looking at the MOT data set published by VOSA: https://data.gov.uk/dataset/anonymised_mot_test.

Sounds like another excellent reason to change your own oil. Many lube places end up putting inferior filters on vehicles anyways, and if you do it yourself, you can know that good oil and a good filter went on the car.

They will probably know your milage anyways. Oftentimes the state requires all registered vehicles to be inspected or emissions tested regularly. I recall that my odometer reading was noted on the inspection forms. I also had to note the odometer reading when I registered the car in the first place, though that one was on the honor system. I have no reason to believe the state doesn't share that information with insurance companies.

https://www.channel3000.com/news/dot-sells-drivers-personal-...

> drivers are also asked to check a box if they wish to have their name and address "withheld from the list the department sells."

> About 2.5 million Wisconsin drivers didn't check the box to withhold their information. By not doing so, those drivers allow the DOT to sell their information on a monthly basis.

> [...]

> In 2010, the DOT made $22,250 selling driver record files.

Wisconsin sells the personal information of 2.5M drivers for a mere $22k. If that emissions information is not reported to insurance companies, I'll eat my hat.

It's cheaper than that. From the link, "The entire driver record file containing information on 2.5 million drivers can be purchased for $250."

The DOT made $22,250 for all sales during 2010, which corresponds to 89 sales.

Meanwhile if google had this information they would sell it for $2,225,000...

Or under/over-tighten, forget the oil, strip the mount. But you need a garage and jack (curb?), oil disposal, etc.

(It's nice not having a car anymore.)

You need stands or ramps as well as a jack. It is very dangerous to go beneath a car held only by a jack!

If you have a lifted 4wd vehicle, you don't even need stands or ramps!

How is this legal for the oil shop to do?

It’s probably implied by something deep in the TOS.

It doesn't need to be in the ToS. In the US your information has no legal protection, with a handful of exceptions like medical information. You should assume any information you give to any company is being shared, sold, and utilized to the fullest extent to monetize you.

Something many do not consider especially in today's era of social media and AI capable of scraping any tidbit of information you reveal about yourself. As an example, this [1] is an extremely primitive tool that generates a profile of Reddit users based on nothing but what they've publicly submitted. The profiles the companies people 'trust' with their information today are going to be orders of magnitude more detailed, and accurate.

[1] - https://snoopsnoo.com/

I'm not sure your odometer readings qualify as protected information. More importantly, on many cars, it's in public view.

So, what's the difference from the oil shop selling this data or from the insurance agent driving to your house and just looking through your side window?

Well, for one thing you have the ability to protect your car at home, and, for instance, keep it secured in a garage where no one else can access it without your permission.

Odo readings on digital displays (ie, every in-dash display for at least a decade) require you to power-on the vehicle.

Since this isn't possible for anyone not in the car when it's locked, it's not really "in public view".

Absolutely correct. In this instance, you have given consent for the staff of the service centre to power on your vehicle and even drive it around to get it inn to the service area. They will also take several measurements of your vehicle such as tyre tread depth, brake pad wear, fluid levels, date of registration, and the mileage to ensure that the correct serviceable parts are replaced for the age and service life of the vehicle. You explicitly consent to them collecting and storing this information as part of the works carried out on your vehicle, in keeping with their policies for how they use this data. This policy states that they may (will) sell this data to insurers. These are the terms of business, and if you don't agree to them you are welcome to take your vehicle elsewhere. The others will also have the same policy, so you'd better be able to source your own diagnostic equipment, or be willing to drive cars made at the latest in the 90's.

>You explicitly consent to them...

it's a stretch to call signing a multi page document that you don't have time to read "explicit consent".

Whose fault is it that you don't have time to read? If you are being asked to sign a document that you feel you have not had reasonable time to read, you should not be signing that document.

That's reasonable until you realize that most people are very busy and don't have enough time to read every contract they sign. Not to mention the amount of peer pressure they might be under from the staff ("just sign it, it's just standard stuff"). Plus almost all of those contracts are on a "take it or leave it" basis, so if they do not agree, they just wasted their day and have to reschedule with another shop, who might also have the same clause in their contracts.

How would it be illegal? If someone came into my business and I noticed something about them, unless it's something specifically protected by law like health information, I'm more or less free to tell others about what I saw. Or even show the public the CCTV footage of what I saw, for example: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/espn-report...

This sort of thing might be regulated under the FCRA, but other than that, companies are pretty free to talk about you to others. Just like how you're free to talk about them to others.

Because someone is making money.

What a ridiculous rigamarole instead of simply requiring that policy holders check in once per year at a registered dealership or mechanic shop.

How would registering dealers or mechanics change the incentives? Insurance companies already created relationships with the oil change places, how would the name on the building change the outcome?

Hang on ... mechanic shop is different to oil change place? Is this a USA-only thing?

An oil change place changes oil, and likely other fluids (transmission, radiator, etc.)

A tire change place changes tires, and likely brakes.

A mechanic shop isn't so specialized.

It's like the difference between a 7-11/corner shop and a full-size grocery store. Or between your local clinic and a hospital.

I assumed shops would report it all anyways since services show up on carfax.

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