I think so, yeah. Smartphones have been in the crosshairs of privacy advocates for years. They gather and send information, but successful lobbying has limited what information gets sold. (note that governments hacking phones or requesting data from isp's is a second thing altogether)

Car manufacturers basically just don't give a peep, and just gather every single morsel of info they can get their hands on, and preferably sell that information to anyone interested.

> All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label -- making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.

So it's "worse than smartphones" in the sense that for smartphones, at least there are options that are privacy-friendly.

Around 1 in 4500 cars newly registered each year in the US are homebuilt or kit cars (which are obviously privacy-preserving).

I tried to find the equivalent market share for privacy-friendly smartphones (and am undoubtedly not up on the latest trends there) to see if it was more or less than 0.02% of the market.

It looks like fairphone sells around 120K devices per year globally (out of around 1.4B total smartphone units). I realize that's not the only brand in the space.

Sorry, I meant "options" as in "among the brands that were reviewed".

(As an aside, the Fairphone by default comes with stock Android. It's primarily more privacy friendly in the sense that it is actively OK with running e.g. /e/OS on it as well.)

It's totally possible to shut down your smartphone, set it in a drawer, and go out somewhere, like a protest or a courthouse or something, where you don't need a smartphone and it isn't tracking you.

You may find it more challenging to leave your car at home while you go someplace like that. Sure, take Uber or public transit; that's all tracked too.