XLRATING
Seasoned Member
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,834
- Location
- Virginia
- My XLR/V(s)
- 2006 Infrared XLR (Beauty); 2008 GT500 (Beast); 2007 Black XLR-V (Victor)
We went to activate OnStar in the newest family member today. When the agent answered, she asked "Is this Mr. (First AND last name of former owner)?" It took us a while to get her to understand that we were the new owners, not Mr. So & So. Then we wanted to add it to our already existing account, she asked if we still had the 2012 GM make, model & trim that the prior owner probably traded for, because we don't have anything close to that. I don't fault OnStar for giving us all this info since presumably they had not been told that the car had been sold.
However, based on this conversation, we now had the name of the prior owner and his new vehicle. Based on him leaving his "Home" setting in the navigation, we knew what street he lived on, but not the house number. A search of his name on the internet pulled up his occupation, street number for his residence, flyover pictures of his house, and house value on the first couple of pages. It's pretty amazing what's out there on the Internet on all of us.
Part of my job involves knowing how to look up these kinds of things, & it is kind of scary how much someone can put together - & we didn't even have any bad intentions for the info we got. My point is if you prefer not to have someone put all that together, then when you sell your car consider clearing out addresses you have in the nav & tell OnStar you have sold the car. Because the new owner might call you & grill you about why you traded in the car - we aren't going to do that, but it happened to me once & was not my favorite moment.
However, based on this conversation, we now had the name of the prior owner and his new vehicle. Based on him leaving his "Home" setting in the navigation, we knew what street he lived on, but not the house number. A search of his name on the internet pulled up his occupation, street number for his residence, flyover pictures of his house, and house value on the first couple of pages. It's pretty amazing what's out there on the Internet on all of us.
Part of my job involves knowing how to look up these kinds of things, & it is kind of scary how much someone can put together - & we didn't even have any bad intentions for the info we got. My point is if you prefer not to have someone put all that together, then when you sell your car consider clearing out addresses you have in the nav & tell OnStar you have sold the car. Because the new owner might call you & grill you about why you traded in the car - we aren't going to do that, but it happened to me once & was not my favorite moment.