An observation on data sanitation
 

We've all heard the stories of buying a hard drive at a garage sale and finding sensitive data or pr0n on it.

My wife just bought a used BMW X3. I was poking through the iDrive system, and all of the previous owner's contacts/phone numbers/destination addresses, etc were still in the system. The PO hadn't bothered cleansing the data, nor did the dealer. I've been able to determine that they were probably a lawyer (or someone who just had lot of court cases up and down the state. They or the SO did yoga. Those were the obvious ones - I didn't xref any of the other addresses or numbers in the system.

I don't know what I could actually do with the information, but I'm sure someone would figure a way to exploit it.

1) Sure for emotional distress caused by owning a former plaintiff's attorney's car.

2) Find out who the lawyer's wife's divorce attorney is (she must have one), and send him/her the info--for a price.

That is odd. I have a 5 Series and they told me that the idrive phone system didn't have any memory and that idrive just displayed what was on the phone. They told me I could link my phone to any BMW loaner and my call history disappeared as soon as my phone disconnected. What year is your X3? Is it possible the PO's phone could be lost inside the vehicle?

Whatever phone it is seems it holds a hell of a charge.

Almost every car I've bought used since those systems exist retained all PO's info, if not the phne stuff, at the very least all the GPO stuff (their home address etc), People don't think of doing this... I guess dealers don't care.

I've only ever owned one car with a system like this. The dealership asked me if I wanted to set up my phone. I told them no.

The way I see it, using such a system:
-Includes data on my contacts, calls I make, places I go, how fast I go, when I brake, when I shift, what RPM the engine is at.
-Means the dealership, the manufacturer, and other third parties (anyone who has access to the car or who the data is sent or sold to) have access to my personal information.
-Uses the data allowance on my phone to send my personal information to the manufacturer, and from there on to third parties.
-Means the data won't go away, ever.
-Means it is easy to forget to wipe, or the procedure for wiping may be effectively impossible for an owner to perform.

All for convenience. :rolleyes:

There is an option to import contacts, which saves them on the car's iDrive HDD. Same goes for music/media, and you can save nav info as well.
When I bought mine, the PO left a complete music library, several contacts, and nav waypoints, including "home". ;)

Pretty easy to clear all that stuff out prior to sale, but I guess many forget to do so...

My BMW is cleansing the flashdrive on a continuous basis, without being asked...