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Comment by miketery | Hacker News Reader

How is this legal for the oil shop to do?

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.

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.

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/

Because someone is making money.

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