Industry Insight with John Yoswick
—John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He is the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com). Contact him by email at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.
DataTouch Offering New Service to Help Collision Repair Shops Manage Access to its Data
Shop Showcase
Pete Tagliapietra is sympathetic to buying parts from, and at what price. collision repairers whose customers It also shows what kind of cars the have found accident information shop repairs, and what cars the cuswith Ed Attanasio about their car on a vehicle history tomers in that geographic area buy report. and drive.” But Tagliapietra said that’s only All that, Tagliapietra said, is a small subset of what he sees as a even aside from the customer’s much larger concern of shop esti- personal identification information mate data being obtained, used and on the estimate, which a growing sold by unauthorized withthird Ed parties. Attanasio number of states have mandated “It’s my belief that most shops businesses take adequate steps to are oblivious to how much estimate protect. information is being scraped off their “If I owned a body shop, I computers, giving third parties a wouldn’t want third parties to know wealth of knowledge about how that all of this—how I run my business shop does business,” said Tagliapi- and with whom—and to be able to etra, founder of the newly-launched use it or sell it without my authoriwith Ed Attanasio DataTouch, LLC. “Even just a small zation, and clearly even in ways that set of a shop’s estimates tells some- are not in my best interest,” he said. one whether or not the shop has Tagliapietra said it’s his belief DRPs, and if so, which ones. It tells “the CARFAX issue”—estimates them the labor rates the shop has resulting in entries on a vehicle’s negotiated withwith different Ed insurance Attanasio history report—and all the other companies. It shows who the shop is third-party use of shop information
Social Media for Shops
SEMA Show Goes On
are the result of thousands of “data pumps” running on shop computer systems across the industry. “Data pumps have become prolific,” Tagliapietra said earlier this year. “It’s gotten out of hand, from my point of view, because the data has become so valuable. Most shops probably have an unauthorized data pump, or more likely multiple data pumps, that are sucking the repair line information and personally identifiable information off of every estimate they write.” A shop may have authorized the installation of some or all of the data pumps running on its computer system, because they can help automate some shop processes, such as sourcing alternative parts, subletting repairs or materials. In other cases, the shop may not be aware of a third-party vendor installing a data pump, or that a data pump installed
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52 AUGUST 2022 AUTOBODY NEWS / autobodynews.com
by a company the shop is no longer doing business with continues to scrape estimate data from the shop’s computers. “But the data pumps themselves are only the first part of the problem,” Tagliapietra said. “The real issue is that shops can’t control what portions of an estimate get scraped by those data pumps. A parts vendor doesn’t need your labor rate information or the customer or insurer name nor even the entire VIN, yet they get all that. A CSI provider doesn’t need anything other than the basic customer contact information, yet they get all the estimate line items and subtotals. A remote scanning company doesn’t need anything other than the complete VIN to identify the specific vehicle and the ADAS functions on that vehicle. “Too much of a shop’s infor-
