Rental Cars Tracking Customers Using GPS

from the not-this-again dept

You may remember the story last year of the guy who rented a car in Connecticut and was fined when the GPS determined the guy was speeding. Now a Budget Rent a Car licensee in Arizona is facing lawsuits about similar claims. They've been accused of illegally tracking renters. They fined some customers for going out of state without written permission, and even told one customer the name of a hotel he stayed at. The rental car outlet denies the various claims, but it does bring up quite a few issues about how GPS is going to be used in rental cars going forward. While most of the rental car firms say they only use it in case of theft (or for concierge/direction type services), it may become more and more tempting for them to "watch over" their customers as well.

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    Chris, Aug 14th, 2002 @ 9:42am

    I'm a big privacy advocate, however Budget does own those cars. They have an ethical, if nor legal, obligation to tell their customers they are being tracked, but they have every right to do it. This just creates a business opportunity for one of their competitors to be the privacy friendly rental car company.

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