TomTom Talks Privacy

TomTom today announced it has been cooperating with the Dutch Data protection Autorithy (CBT) that ran an investigation over the allegated sharing of its customer private location data with third parties.

CBT has confirmed that TomTom is fully compliant with Dutch privacy laws, altough it also stated that TomTom should be clearer in communicating to its customers about how their data is used to generate TomTom’s mapping, routing and traffic services. 

To this end TomTom also announced that it will run a software update in February on all its consumer products.

“This update will provide customers with detailed information about what customer location information TomTom gathers, how TomTom uses customers’ location data and how customers can easily opt in and out of sharing their location data if they wish to. TomTom has a created a dedicated section on www.tomtom.com/yourdata, to clearly explain how it uses and safeguards location data.“

Privacy is today a major topic in the location-based services industry where passive data crowdsourcing is used by many companies with little explanations to their customers. Unfortunately this topic does not get the attention it should from decision makers. Thus far data protection authorities - often under funded and overbooked with the task at hand - have concentrated on the big fishes: Google, Apple, and now TomTom.

However, small players which have less time, knowledge and resources might put their business at risk one day or another in not respecting local privacy laws, especially in Europe where the legal landscape is more complex.