Tomtom to start selling IQroutes data to advertisers

[mvl]

Tomtom will start selling IQroutes speed data to advertisers, for the purpose of showing how many people see a given billboard.

Personally, I never expected Tomtom to release IQroutes data externally. And this seems like the first step on the slippery slope of giving more detailed personalized tracklog data to advertisers. Tomtom recently gave $10 coupons to people who update their profile demographics, and perhaps this may explain why.

I'm one who feels strongly about privacy, and that's the primary reason why I would never have used Google turn-by-turn. Now I'm not so sure. For now I set my Tomtom profile to dummy demographic data.

Edit: I was thinking of turning off anonymous data sharing because of this, but after I cooled down a bit, I eventually decided to leave that alone. Anonymous data is put to such good use with IQroutes.

 

[enovy]

Unacceptable

I turned off anonymous data sharing because of this. Slippery slope indeed.
I allowed data sharing because I have no problem with TomTom using it to improve their services, but I don't agree with them handing it over to advertisers who try to keep track of where everyone goes. More than half my routes have my house as the source or destination, so it seems easy enough to figure out where people live and then who they are based on the routes. What next - give them my customized POIs or favorites or start popping up ads on my device? I know there are big bucks to be made in advertising, but there are serious privacy issues here.
By the way, Google's CEO has a vision of the future in which everything is networked and your gps knows when you need a new pair of pants and department store advertisements are broadcasted as you drive by them.

 

[go930user]

Tomtom will start selling IQroutes speed data to advertisers, for the purpose of showing how many people see a given billboard.

Personally, I never expected Tomtom to release IQroutes data externally. And this seems like the first step on the slippery slope of giving more detailed personalized tracklog data to advertisers. Tomtom recently gave $10 coupons to people who update their profile demographics, and perhaps this may explain why.

I'm one who feels strongly about privacy, and that's the primary reason why I would never have used Google turn-by-turn. Now I'm not so sure. For now I set my Tomtom profile to dummy demographic data.

Edit: I was thinking of turning off anonymous data sharing because of this, but after I cooled down a bit, I eventually decided to leave that alone. Anonymous data is put to such good use with IQroutes.

I can't say I'm too fussed about using the anonymous data to determine which parts of a road tend to have lower average speeds and thus become a more "attractive" site for bill boards. (Aside from the fact that such bill boards are a distraction, and thus an extra hazard that drivers have to deal with)

But I am very fussed about postcodes for track start and finish points being released. Although they claim "postcodes" those data have, I think, to be determined by lat/long co-ordinates, which does identify addresses. I reserve the right to determine who has my address and the conditions that govern how that information is used. I would need to refresh my memory of Tomtom's privacy policy, but I would hazard a guess that it has a "information provided by you will not be released to any third party" or somesuch clause. And I have trouble seeing any difference between what they are proposing regarding IQ routes and the data each of us provides when we register a unit.

But it is interesting that the data being provided by users (although available to others via "map share" ) and which ultimately appears in later generations of maps does not seem to have had much impact on the price of upgrades.

Cheers

Alan