The connected car, point by point.

Gps.

The satellite chip feeding navigation and the built-in modem. It is the source of the precise, continuous location trail the car reports outward. The receiver listens to GPS satellites and their GLONASS and Galileo counterparts, computing a fix several times a second. That fix feeds the navigation screen and the modem simultaneously, the crash recorder too. Modern fixes land within a few meters, close enough to tell a driveway from the street. On some models, pulling the telematics fuse stops the reporting, at the cost of connected features.

Your commute is a coordinate stream, and coordinate streams are the most resold data type there is.

The car’s modem.

A cellular connection hidden in the roof fin. The car reports position, trips, and driving behavior to the manufacturer on its own, which is how GM data reached insurers. The telematics unit carries its own SIM and transmits trips and speed to the manufacturer’s cloud, braking and diagnostics too. On many models the connection stays active whether or not you subscribe. The GM case showed the full pipeline: driving scores flowed through LexisNexis and Verisk to insurers, and premiums moved. A federal settlement followed, and several automakers paused similar programs.

Known systems / ONSTAR · LEXISNEXIS · VERISK

The car phones home whether or not your phone is in it, and you are not a party to the call.

Car-to-car radio.

Where fitted, the car broadcasts its position, speed, and heading to nearby vehicles and roadside units many times a second. Built for safety, and a beacon by design. Vehicle-to-everything radios broadcast a basic safety message with position and heading, speed included, up to ten times a second. Any receiver in range can log the stream. The messages rotate pseudonym certificates to resist tracking, and researchers keep publishing ways to link them anyway. Fitment remains limited to certain models and corridors.

A safety broadcast is also a public announcement of exactly where you are, on repeat.

The dash screen.

Pairing a phone copies contacts and call logs into the dash, messages too, where they persist through rentals and resale. Built-in apps add accounts and history on top. Head units store paired phone books, call logs, message previews, and navigation history in local memory. Forensic kits built for police extract all of it in minutes. Rental returns and trade-ins routinely ship with the previous driver’s life on board. A factory reset before selling, and skipping the sync in rentals, closes most of it.

Known systems / APPLE CARPLAY · ANDROID AUTO

Whoever drives the car next inherits a copy of your social life.

Driver-assist sensors.

Radar, ultrasonic sensors, and outside cameras watch the road for you. Several brands retain and have shared that footage, so the car logs what it sees around it. Cameras and radar map everything around the car alongside ultrasonic sensors, and several brands upload clips for engineering review. Captured footage has included plates and faces, private property too. Reuters reported Tesla employees privately sharing customers’ camera clips, including from parked cars. Assume the car’s eyes have a memory and, sometimes, an audience.

Known systems / TESLA · MOBILEYE

Your car is a camera crew that never asks where the footage goes.

Internal wiring.

One network carries everything: speed, steering, braking, doors, seatbelts. Anything plugged into the car can listen to it, which is why dongles matter. The CAN bus carries unauthenticated messages between every module, from throttle position to seatbelt latches. Any device on the bus can read the full stream and often write to it. Insurance dongles and aftermarket trackers tap this network, shop tools too. What you plug in, and who made it, is a trust decision about the whole car.

One cheap plug-in device can read the whole car, so every dongle is a decision.

Inside camera + mics.

Driver-monitoring cameras watch attention and drowsiness, and voice assistants send cabin audio to the cloud. Inside data rides the same pipe as everything else. Driver monitoring tracks eye gaze and head position, and cabin assistants stream voice audio to cloud services for processing. Some systems retain in-cabin recordings under the policy’s terms. Suppliers like Smart Eye and Seeing Machines sit behind many brands’ badges. The policies allow more than most drivers assume, and opting out usually disables the feature.

Known systems / SMART EYE · SEEING MACHINES

The most private space you own now has an audience.

Keyless entry fob.

The fob and the car talk over radio whenever you approach. The exchange marks your presence, and relay gear can capture it from a distance. The fob answers the car’s radio challenge automatically whenever it is in range. That handshake marks presence and can be relayed by attackers standing near your door and your car at once. Relay theft against passive entry is a documented, ongoing problem. A signal-blocking pouch at home, and disabling passive entry where the menu allows, removes the always-on beacon.

Standing near your own car is a logged event.

License plate.

Camera networks on poles, patrol cars, and repo trucks photograph plates with time and place, compiling citywide histories of where a car has been. ALPR cameras capture plate, location, timestamp, and often a photo of the vehicle and driver. Commercial and police networks pool reads into searchable movement databases. Networked lookups now cross towns and states in seconds, and some cities publish audit portals showing exactly what their cameras feed. One camera is a data point; the network is a history.

Known systems / FLOCK SAFETY · MOTOROLA VIGILANT · DRN

You can harden every device you own and the plate still narrates your movements.

Tire sensors.

Each tire broadcasts its pressure with a unique radio ID. A cheap receiver nearby can recognize the car by its tires, no plate needed. Each sensor broadcasts a unique ID with its pressure reading every few seconds while the car moves. The signal is unencrypted and readable at tens of meters with hobbyist radio gear. Researchers demonstrated tracking and spoofing more than a decade ago, and the protocol has barely changed. It is a niche technique, and it works.

Your tires can betray the car even with every screen and radio off.

Diagnostic port.

The socket under the dash. Insurance dongles, fleet trackers, and repo devices plugged here read the car’s wiring and report location and driving to a third party. OBD-II exposes the car’s network through a connector required on every car since 1996. Dongles plugged there log location and speed along with driving events, uploading over their own cell link. Usage-based insurance trades a visible discount for a complete driving record held by the insurer’s vendor. Read what the program retains and shares before the discount decides for you.

Known systems / PROGRESSIVE SNAPSHOT

A discount on insurance is often the purchase price of your driving record.

Crash black box.

Speed, throttle, braking, and seatbelt status in the seconds around a crash, saved automatically and extracted afterward by investigators and insurers. The recorder continuously buffers speed, throttle, braking, steering, and belt status, freezing the final seconds when a crash triggers it. Federal rules standardize what it captures. Bosch’s retrieval kit is the industry tool, used by investigators, insurers, and opposing counsel. In several states the data belongs to the vehicle owner, and access still follows the car.

Known systems / BOSCH CDR

In a dispute, the car is a witness, and it was never on your side by default.