A couple who rent cars through the app Turo has landed in hot water because of their posts on TikTok. By posting data on the people who rent their vehicles, they have caught the attention of privacy activists.
In a series of recent TikTok videos, the couple, Kyle and John, talk about tracking customers who rented their Porsche Boxster. They complain about the renter’s behavior by pointing to areas on a green-screen map where their tracking device registered hard braking and rapid acceleration events.
Although the couple are complaining about the person to whom they rented the car, the video has led many to complain about their behavior. Whitney Merrill, a privacy expert and lawyer, took to Twitter to decry the video’s hosts for showing the precise GPS coordinates of the driver.
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Oh good, another fear unlocked. Rent a car & the car rental company will track your precise geo, speed, acceleration etc via some consumer-facing iot device (Bouncie in this case) and post where you’ve been driving on tiktok and make jokes. pic.twitter.com/ngb3XAc014
— Whitney Merrill (@wbm312) September 28, 2022
“No company should be posting personal data of their users on the internet without their permission. Unethical and problematic, and just creepy,” Merrill told Vice. “They have more videos where the wife is just ‘tracking’ the Porsche. And, I as a consumer, wouldn’t want to rent from any company or individual stalking me like that.”
The couple call themselves Turo Power Hosts, and on another account, they say they use the Bouncie GPS Car Tracker, which provides information on vehicle location, route history, speed, and accidents.
On their website, the couple does disclose that their vehicles are equipped with a tracker “for insurance purposes.” Turo‘s official policy, too, allows the use of tracking devices. When contacted by Vice, however, the company said it was getting in touch with the couple about “the intended purpose of their device/system.” For some, though, the couples’ videos go too far.
“Spying on people who have rented your car (presumably without disclosing) is gross, but making TikToks about it takes it to a whole new level,” Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Vice.
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