TomTom sorry for giving customer driving data to cops

By Dan Goodin, The Register

Navigation device maker TomTom has apologized for supplying driving data collected from customers to police to use in catching speeding motorists.

The data, including historical speed, has been sold to local and regional governments in the Netherlands to help police set speed traps, Dutch newspaper AD reported here, with a Google translation here. As more smartphones offer GPS navigation service, TomTom has been forced to compensate for declining profit by increasing sales in other areas, including the selling of traffic data.

On Wednesday, Europe’s biggest satnav device maker apologized, saying it sold the data believing it would improve traffic safety and reduce bottlenecks, The Associated Press reported.

“We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it,” Chief Executive Harold Goddijn wrote in an email sent to customers. He went on to say that licensing agreements in the future would “prevent this type of use in the future.”

With the revelation, TomTom becomes the latest company to raise privacy concerns about location data it holds on its customers. Over the past week, questions have been raised about Apple, Google, and Microsoft and the location data stored or tracked by the iPhone, and Android and Windows Phone 7 devices, respectively.

To read more, visit:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/tomtom_customer_data_flap/

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