When Selling An Electric Car, These Are The Cleaning Steps To Pay Attention To

Before selling an electric car, there are cleaning steps that must be carried out. (photo: unsplash)

JAKARTA - When someone sells a car, especially an electric one, they are also likely selling your personal information. While most people think they are done with just cleaning their car. But actually you also have to clean up your car's electronic information. According to the Federal Trade Commission, an electric car is a computer that stores a lot of information about a person.

“With the technology in today's vehicles, it's easy when they own the vehicle, but that can lead us to certain types of businesses opening ourselves up to certain types of identity theft and inevitably compromising our personal information, if and when we sell that vehicle to someone else in some way. maps track the places we've been, garage door codes stored, how we connect our phones and apps to computers in vehicles. We want to make sure we want to clean up the stuff and not hand over your vehicle with all that data still on it,” said Chris Babin, of the Better Business Bureau of Acadiana.

Every day, people sell their cars on sites like Facebook Marketplace, and other classifieds sites. Experts warn they may also sell their personal information.

“It can store your credit card information in a vehicle somewhere or even, maybe your home Wi-Fi network which with the right technology and tools, the right people, can access your home network which can make your computers and laptops and all vulnerable too,” Babin said.

As a precaution, car dealers delete all personal information stored on a person's vehicle after it is traded.

“Always make sure you delete your old phone and your phonebook and address in your navigation system to protect yourself from future information left in the car. When you go to navigation, you want to delete all addresses that you own,” said Michelle Newland, BMW Client Advisor at Moss BMW.

Here are some tips from the Better Business Bureau on what to look for when clearing your personal data from your car:

- Check the factory reset option in your car.

- Remove subscription services such as satellite radio and Wi-Fi hotspots.

- Check synchronization. See if your phone contacts or other digital content like music can be downloaded in the car.

- Review navigation systems for location data such as home and work.

- Remove garage door codes for your home or office.

Through these methods, electric vehicles or cars that have been linked to computer applications can be "really clean".