She stopped responding to him, she said, even though he texted and called her hundreds of times.
Ms. Dowdall, 59, started occasionally seeing a strange new message on the display in her Mercedes, about a location-based service called “mbrace.” The second time it happened, she took a photograph and searched for the name online.
“I realized, oh my God, that’s him tracking me,” Ms. Dowdall said.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After one of their fights turned violent in September 2022, Ms. Dowdall, a real estate agent, fled their home in Covington, La., driving her Mercedes-Benz C300 sedan to her daughter’s house near Shreveport, five hours away.
Ms. Dowdall called Mercedes customer service repeatedly to try to remove her husband’s digital access to the car, but the loan and title were in his name, a decision the couple had made because he had a better credit score than hers.
Modern cars have been called “smartphones with wheels” because they are internet-connected and have myriad methods of data collection, from cameras and seat weight sensors to records of how hard you brake and corner.
Detective Kelly Downey of the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office, who investigated Ms. Dowdall’s husband for stalking, also reached out to Mercedes more than a dozen times to no avail, she said.
Katie Ray-Jones, the chief executive of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said abusive partners used a wide variety of internet-connected devices — from laptops to smart home products — to track and harass their victims.
Adam Dodge, a former family law attorney turned digital safety trainer, called car app stalking “a blind spot for victims and automakers.”
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