I travel a lot and frequently rent cars in cities all over the country. Those of you who know me, (and my husband and children will attest), know that I will not ask for directions. I am definitely more like a man than a woman when it comes to refusing to stop and ask for directions.

But I also refused to download Waze ever since it required that you basically give up your entire contacts list to them, and I don’t like to put my location based services on for Google maps. So what’s a stubborn girl to do when I am in a foreign city trying to get to my destination?

Most rental cars now give you the option for GPS (and as soon as you turn the car on, it says “Welcome, Linn Freedman”) and the ability to connect your cell phone to the blue tooth feature in the car. So the last time I rented a car, I looked at that GPS screen that knew who the driver was, and I knew that they were also tracking everywhere I drove. And when the screen said to connect my cell phone to the blue tooth, I knew that it was tracking every telephone call I made, down to the exact number I called. Is that something that the rental car agency really needed to have? What would they do with that information? So obviously, I didn’t use the GPS, nor did I connect my phone.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one concerned.
Continue Reading Privacy Tip #52 – Sharing Your Information with Your Rental Car