Tesla Employees Leaked Sensitive User Data Including Images

Tesla likes to claim that vehicle camera footage “remains anonymous.” But now a report makes it clear that they are not – employees shared particularly bizarre, funny, or dramatic recordings in chat rooms, among other things.

This is reported by Reuters which found a number of examples and spoke to several former Tesla employees to support the allegations. However, Reuters also writes that they have not seen any sensitive material.

Privacy is of utmost importance

It came out: Tesla assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy is “enormously important and always will be”, but there are no security measures against group employees passing on sensitive data without authorization. According to Reuters research, between 2019 and 2022, this happened among various groups of Tesla employees who privately shared videos and images captured by customers’ dashcams via an internal messaging system.

There were very different situations. A former employee described a video showing a man approaching a vehicle completely naked. An accident video from 2021 shows a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area and ramming a child on the bike. That video spread “like wildfire” at a Tesla office in San Mateo, California, via private one-on-one chats, according to the tipster.

“We could also see into people’s garages and their private properties,” said another former employee. “Suppose a Tesla customer had something in their garage that stood out, people would post things like that.”

The employees are also said to have spied on their own boss because according to Reuters one of these recordings showed a Lotus Esprit submarine, nicknamed “Wet Nellie”, which was used in the 1977 James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me”. was featured and is owned by Elon Musk. Tesla has not yet responded to Reuters’ request for comment.