Otonomo Makes Driver Info Anonymous

Although people like the ability to be connected when they’re driving their vehicles, what they probably don’t know—and what they probably wouldn’t like at all—is the fact that there is a whole lot of information about them that is capable of being obtained through that connectivity.

According to the people at Otonomo, which provides a “neutral automotive data services platform” that allows all manner of things as a result of obtaining vehicular information, such as predictive maintenance, emergency services, on-demand fueling, in-vehicle delivery, and insurance, right now “A driver can be identified not only by personal information like their name and cell phone, but also indirectly by his or her VIN number, vehicle location, or trip patterns.”

Who knew?

And who wants all of that out there?

So the company has developed what it calls the “Otonomo Anonymization Engine.”

This provides GDPR-compliant data privacy safeguards while providing valuable information to those who want to use it for their commercial ends.

The engine strips out all personally identifiable information, then performing things like blurring location accuracy/frequency, vehicle ID, replacing raw data with trip aggregation, and more.

One approach doesn’t fit all.

Says Amir Freund, Otonomo chief product officer, “different use cases require different anonymization techniques. For example, parking use cases require precise location, so location blurring is not a practical way to anonymize the data. However, vehicle ID can be blurred and changed very often.”

So getting that parking spot identified is something that a driver would like. And probably like it even more knowing that they, specifically, aren’t being data mined.