What Data Do Car Companies Collect About You?

Ask the Hackrs
1

So I’ve been looking at cars heavily this month and I was kind of surprised when a dealership I never contacted cold called me.

When I asked him how he got my number he said he got it from a list from CarGuru. I am using this website to check inventory levels of the car I am looking for. This pissed me off a lot. I did not sign up for Car Guru, so the site must have used cookies to collect my metadata and then sold it through a list to a dealership.

Since then I am doing all my car searches on a private browser. Do you think this will shield me?

Also, a few times that I have called dealerships, some of them will straight out tell me that I have been shopping around with other dealerships right? How would they know this? I was thinking that maybe they would check my out of the area phone number, but maybe the dealerships are colluding with each other and sharing data when people call in for quotes. Is this paranoid or do you think dealerships are doing this?

2

I have used cargurus for the past three years (a lot), never have gotten any call.

3

If you didn’t sign up for anything then it’s not possible for CarGuru to have your cell phone number and or personal information based on a cookie.

4

your first born’s blood type for sure :sunglasses:

5

He probably lied. They won’t disclose their sources :sunglasses:

6

But he did disclose his source.

He cold called me, and wanted to know what I wanted. I asked him how he got my number and he said “I dunno, were you using the site CarGuru.”

7

No, he didn’t. He said he didn’t know a just gave you a guess.