Within the past decade, the technology used in vehicles has significantly advanced, allowing many modern cars to become increasingly connected.

This means new cars now have many ways to record user data. Modern vehicles can record your seatbelt settings and how often you use the accelerator, and even gather biometric information about you.

Unfortunately, some of this data is being sold by the questionable data broker industry.

New cars record a shocking amount of user data
In May, Privacy4Cars, a U.S.-based automotive firm, released a new tool called the Vehicle Privacy Report. The tool helps reveal how much information on your car can be used.

Like Apple and Google's privacy labels for apps, which show how Facebook might use your smartphone's camera, Vehicle Privacy Report reveals what vehicle manufacturers can know about users.

Tech website WIRED used industry sales data and ran 10 of the most popular cars in America through Vehicle Privacy Report to find out how much information they can collect. The results were alarming.

The analysis follows earlier reports on the amount of data modern cars can collect and share, with some estimates claiming that modern cars can produce 25 gigabytes (GB) of data per hour.

Andrea Amico, the founder of Privacy4Cars, explained that users don't completely understand what data their cars can collect as there is little education and the level of detail and transparency varies across manufacturers.

The tool ranks most modern vehicles as "smartphones on wheels" because they can collect user data and wirelessly send that information to manufacturers.