Volkswagen drivers are urged to download an app to fully utilize their car and take advantage of its conveniences, such as preheating the car, reading the battery charge level, and checking the current range.
The app then collects and transmits data to the manufacturer, including exact GPS data on where the car is parked every time the engine is turned off. This is information that should not be publicly available, but according to Spiegel, several terabytes of data from around 800,000 electric cars have been largely unprotected in Amazon's cloud storage for months.
"It's clear who parks at home, outside the intelligence agency or in front of the brothel," writes Spiegel.
In addition to Volkswagen, Seat, Audi, and Skoda vehicles in Germany, Europe, and other parts of the world have been affected.
The data breach was discovered after a whistleblower informed Spiegel and the hacker group Chaos Computer Club (CCC).
