When selling your car, you might also be selling your personal information.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, your car is a computer that stores a lot of information about you.
While most people think they are done with just cleaning out their car, you might also want to clean out your car’s electronic information.
Jenn Love, with the Better Business Bureau of Acadiana, says, “When people sell their cars they think hey I have to clean the inside of it but who thinks to actually factory reset their cars.”
According to the Better Business Bureau, when you sell your car and don’t factory reset it, you are essentially selling your personal private information.
“Most people don’t realize how much information your car stores,” Love adds. “They’re selling their cars on Facebook marketplace Craigslist and other sites and not factory resetting their car so your car will sync to your phone it’s like a computer on its own. So that’s your contacts that’s your navigation that’s your subscriptions as well.”
According to the Federal Trade Commission, your car is a computer that stores a lot of information just like your smartphone or home computer.
“A lot of these navigation systems will actually mark where your home is or where your work is so essentially when you sell your car and you don’t factory reset that you’re letting the next seller know where you live at and some cars actually have a way that you can use your garage door from the car if you don’t wipe that now they have access into your home as well,” explains Love.
As a precaution, Moss BMW does delete all the private information saved in one’s vehicle after it’s traded in.
BMW Client Advisor at Moss BMW, Michelle Newland, says, “Always make sure you delete your old phone and your phone book and addresses in your navigation system to protect yourself from any future information that’d be left on the car.”
“You can go right here delete your device and when you go into navigation making sure that anything that’s saved on the vehicle you would want to delete any addresses that you have,” explains Newland.