Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn’t actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.
The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some “AI magic”, I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.
I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.
When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or “nice feature actually”, “what about the camera on your laptop?”, “you are way too paranoid”, “I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded”.
I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.
What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn’t really find any information about it on the internet.
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You might be able to remove the corresponding fuse
Unlikely this camera is on a fuse by itself. If this camera is faulted, or can’t see a face, it’s likely all driver assistance features, like lane centering or adaptive cruise control, would be disabled.
That might be a dealbreaker for some
I have a BYD Han, and the camera has a sliding cover, which has never been opened. Its crazy that you can’t cover it without the car complaining.
Nothing a piece of tape won’t fix.
Until the update that shuts down the car unless it can consistently recognize a face.
Buying a new car in 2026 is a risky proposition.
It’s definitely creepy, but i can see someone who has gotten in trouble driving sleepy might want it?
Destroy the camera bro
Wasn’t there some news a while ago that talked about how bad car companies handle user data?
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information
[…]Says Jen Caltrider, *PNI Program Director: “Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school, cry your eyes out over a break-up, or drive places you might not want the world to know about. But that perception no longer matches reality. All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information."[…] (source)
Not sure if this was the one I was thinking about. There was also this revelation made by the German CCC (Chaos computer club, pretty famous) about Volkswagen and some leaked GPS data. Here is an English article about it. (There is also the German CCC video, but the English doesn’t sound very good. It includes an interesting part where they show examples of how bad this GPS leak actually is. E.g. finding the cars of catering companies for important people.)
Criminals or spies could potentially use such data to create a detailed movement profile of the car owners. For foreign intelligence agencies, for example, it may be of interest to see whose cars are parked daily between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. near buildings belonging to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Or those which are driven regularly to the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein. The Cariad data provided such information.
Btw. Any person who in the year 2026 response to privacy concerns with “I have nothing to hide” is a certified moron and shouldn’t be trusted with anything. They also have so little imagination that it should make everyone sad.
I’ve taken apart the screen bezel on my laptop to disable the webcam before -then covid happened. Now, i just cover the camera with taped paper. -I will never have one of these cars but if i found myself in your situation i wouldn’t be above using a hammer and screwdriver to remove the camera and dealing with the consequences after.
I don’t think you are paranoid. This technology is creepy as hell. Almost all cars are connected nowadays and send data back to the manufacturer’s server—visible or not. In the best case it’s just the service history, in the worst case live positions and more. Some cars stop working if the server is shut down *cough. Cameras equipped to unlock based on a face record biometric data. And honestly, would you trust your car manufacturer (!) to handle your biometric data?
Side question : is your car connected to the internet ?
Yes, it has a 2GB/month sim card as far as i am aware
Were you aware of that before you got the car?
Are you aware all new cars are connected?
I have the inner cam covered on my tesla, no probs so far (been like that for 4 years)
Black tape ought to solve it, if not a pair of wire cutters.
I think it’s unacceptable and indicative of this dangerous path we are headed down as whole. There’s already been a few write ups on how cars are the most privacy disrespecting “devices” out there, which is wild considering we have smartphones.
With the driver facing camera we have no control over it also has complete access to our travel data, probably knows exactly who we are in the car with, records all our private conversations etc. etc.
It’s so tiring to hear people defend this as if privacy is a thing of the past and anyone advocating it is being dramatic.
Pull the telematics fuse, although I think they integrate it in so many things now it’s rediculous.
Surveillance is good as long as we like the direction the machine is heading.
I fckn hate these laws that force so much tech into new cars under the guise of safety. Not only is it a massive breach in privacy (I don’t care if the car manufacturers claim they don’t use this data for identification, I won’t belive them), but it also makes small cars way more expensive, comparatively. Fck this sh*t, cars have been becoming obnoxiously expensive and forced BS tech like that just makes everything worse.
I fckn hate these laws that force so much tech into new cars under the guise of safety.
Well you see, if we force car companies to invent magical safety technology to paper over bad road design and too many cars on the road, then we can avoid addressing the bad road design and too many cars on the road!
Calm down, Francis, it’s a $9 camera that watches if you are nodding off or using your phone while driving.
These are among the activities that kill 30,000 people a year on US roads.
Yeah they could mandate dual side mirrors to cover blind spots that would prevent a lot of crashes, but they rather mandate a beeping sound right before you crash instead idk
It’s rent seeking through regulations. It’s too expensive to make a simple car that also complies with these regulations. The only people who can afford to do it are gigantic established brands with a century of production lines and established infrastructure.
“Oh no. More car brands failed. We can’t let them fail can we? Allow us to merge more?”
“Oh no. We’re in trouble financially. If we die you won’t have cars at all any more because we merged everything. Lots and lots of your voters will be pissed if that happens. There’s also no way in hell a new car brand is going to establish itself when it costs so damn much to meet these regulations we lobbied and guided to benefit our established interests”
Clearly they use it for identification if as the OP said the camera can be used to load your driver profile. As far as I know that goes directly against the EU law stating no biometric data can be processed by the camera.
