ATLANTA -

At Used Car Week 2018 as well as last summer’s gathering of the International Automotive Remarketers Alliance (IARA), Andrea Amico described risk many automotive-industry segments face in connection with Personally Identifiable Information (PII) stored in a vehicle’s technology system.

On Friday, Amico — founder of Privacy4Cars.com — described the headway his firm made in reducing that risk thanks to a newly formed relationship with America’s Auto Auction. The group’s 23 auction locations now will offer a personal information deletion service to vehicle consignors, including OEMs, captives, banks and auto lenders, rental and business fleets and dealers through the use of mobile process available from Privacy4Cars.

“We are excited to partner with such a leader in the auto auction industry as America’s Auto Auction,” Amico said in a news release. “We often see consignors bringing vehicles to auctions that still contain the previous drivers’ personal information stored in their electronic systems (garage door codes, home addresses, phone identifiers, contact lists, call logs, text messages, etc.)

“Now thanks to this relationship, consignors can rely on America’s Auto Auction to dispose of the personal information stored in their vehicles, whether it’s to be compliant with internal record disposal guidelines, to provide peace of mind to their customers, or to meet the requirements of privacy and security of connected devices laws in a growing list of states,” Amico continued.

Launched in the summer of 2018, the Privacy4Cars app can delete personal data retained by modern vehicle infotainment systems quickly and efficiently.

America’s Auto Auction assistant vice president Matt Arias also leads the auction standards committee at both the National Auto Auction Association (NAAA) and IARA. Arias elaborated on how this service can benefit auction group customers.

“It would be a mistake to underestimate how challenging it is to standardize and efficiently perform the clearing of the personal Information,” Arias said. “This is a manual process and there is nothing standard about the vehicles that are consigned.

“We realized we needed a consistent method to efficiently clear all of the information. In short, we needed this tool. Privacy4Cars’ is the best solution,” Arias continued. “Not just because the operators get step-by-step directions on how to clear the systems, but also comes with detailed and on-demand records we can rely on to both provide proof of work to our consignors and operational metrics to efficiently run the process.”

Amico reiterated some of the points he made during Used Car Week and other wholesale industry events to emphasize the importance of Privacy4Cars aligning with America’s Auto Auction.

“We know from multiple studies what data is collected and how often is left behind. We also know may consignors are growingly frustrated by this issue and the associated risks and are looking at auctions to help. We also know that even skilled operators in single-make consignments have a hard time getting the deletion of the Personal Information right, vehicle after vehicle.” Amico said.

“Seeing one of the world’s largest auction chains embracing our patent-pending process is an incredible validation of what we do and the value we bring to the industry,” he went on to say.

Founded in 2005, America’s Auto Auction has 23 locations, including four in Texas, three in Pennsylvania and two apiece in Illinois and Florida.

“This relationship with America’s Auto Auction and Privacy4Cars allows us to serve a growing number of auction guests who are already asking for the service, and sends a simple message to the rest of the industry: if you want to delete consumers’ personal non-public data, we are ready,” Arias said.