Tesla is facing a bit of a privacy scandal, with revelations that some of its employees shared private customer images taken by their vehicles’ cameras.
First reported by Reuters, Tesla employees apparently shared sensitive customer photos and videos captured by Tesla cameras with one another, with many of them serving as entertainment.
Some of the videos were potentially embarrassing, such as one showing a man approaching his car completely naked. Others showed crashes, such as the one of a child being hit by a Tesla while riding his bike. This video reportedly spread “like wildfire” among employees.
Other images were relatively harmless but were used by employees to make memes before being shared with others.
“We could see inside people’s garages and their private properties,” said another former employee. “Let’s say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things.”
Even some of the company’s employees were not comfortable with how customer images were shared, viewing it as a clear violation of privacy.
“It was a breach of privacy, to be honest. And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people,” said one former employee.
Another said: “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”
As Reuters points out, Tesla has spent years reassuring its customers that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us” and that the vehicle cameras are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.”
This latest report is clear evidence that Tesla’s claims are nothing more than marketing nonsense: Long on promise, short on delivery.
