Ditch Your Data When You Return Your Rental Car

Protect your identity from unscrupulous characters with a few simple steps.

Mark Elias | 

Aug 24, 2023 | 3 min read

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Smartphone capabilities grow each day. Many people use smartphone tech constantly — at home, in the office, or when traveling by car. Smartphones are used as music players, email portals, communication devices, and digital wallets. If you're in a rental car, it probably feels natural to connect your phone for the ride. Even if you're only using that phone for music on the trip, it still contains sensitive information. So don't forget to wipe away your data from a rental vehicle when returning it after a business or pleasure trip. Doing so can offer some identity-theft protection. You can never be too cautious in securing your identity.

Brush Your Bluetooth

According to Consumer Watchdog, a U.S. nonprofit focused on consumer advocacy, using Bluetooth in a rental car could put your identity at risk. The group urges renters to be careful using a navigation system or playing music through Bluetooth while in a rented car, as most rental-car companies have no policies requiring agency employees to delete sensitive information once they receive a returned vehicle. That information could include destinations or GPS coordinates you may have entered during your drives.

When bad actors compare your navigation history with social media profiles on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and other "open-source" intelligence, they can potentially retrace your steps and gain access to your contact list, account numbers, and additional sensitive information.

GPS Coordinates Act as Digital Pinpoints

The same information applies if you sell your personal vehicle or return a leased one at the end of its term. According to online technology publication Make Use Of, vehicles have a factory reset option to help blank out excursion history. Failure to remove GPS coordinates may expose where you live, work, travel, and more. Left-behind GPS data can be used as "breadcrumbs" to your home and your cellphone, including the data it may hold.

Delete Your Phone and Its Data

You can easily remove a connected cellphone by accessing the Bluetooth settings on the vehicle's touchscreen display. Go to "connected phones" and select your device (likely the phone at the top of the list). Once you have highlighted the specific mobile phone, select the "Remove" or "Delete" button. Following these steps should delete your device's identity from the car. Features differ, but you can expect to find these basic steps.

Delete your contact list, too. A hacker could text someone on your list pretending to be you, asking friends for money or vital information. Your call records can reveal times you phone your contacts, thus providing information about when you or your contacts may not be home.

A Car Is Like a Computer on Wheels

Your smartphone can act as a car's hard drive. Get in the mindset of deleting personal information and data from a rental vehicle as you would when trading and updating to the latest iPhone or Android smartphone. Follow this checklist:

• Wipe the vehicle of all stored destinations.
• Log out of linked mobile apps, such as Waze or Google Maps.
• Delete GPS coordinates in navigation searches.
• Clear call history logs.
• Erase remaining sensitive data, passwords, account information, or credit card numbers from the text message log.

Mark Elias

Mark Elias is an award-winning automotive journalist and photographer who has covered the industry for the past 20 years. Along the way, he has photographed for news agencies, car manufacturers, and Fortune 500 companies. He loves playing and building guitars — but his wife will only let him have five at any one time.