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Delete All Data from Your Car Before Disposal or Repair

April 3, 2019

We live in a very different world from our parents. Growing up, motor vehicles had carburetors, window cranks and push buttons to change radio stations. Today, there are so many devices that contain information about us and our habits. Naked Security reported that a damaged Tesla ended up revealing all sorts of personal unencrypted data contained in the vehicle. The unencrypted data included “phonebooks, calendar items, location and navigational data.”

I’m scheduled to have the GPS/Infotainment head unit in my car replaced shortly. I’ll be factory resetting the unit while I’m parked at the dealer before taking it into the service bay. There is all kinds of data programmed into the unit. There is Bluetooth information about my phone. All of my contact information that has synchronized with the phone. All previous navigation destinations as well as home and work location data. There’s even my Wi-Fi network name and password since the car’s software can be updated from my home network.

We need to wipe data from all our devices before disposal. Unfortunately, there is no DBAN software for cars or smart IoT devices. Think about all the data that may exist before disposing of or selling any modern day device.

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