How much would you pay for a service to pull the Mfr's sim chip from deep inside your new car's dash?
Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
611–620 of 660 posts
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
>sometimes the phone gets tired of listening to GPS. I'm sorry, what?
I was recently driving to visit a friend near Mt Baker, WA. and about 10 miles out, in a not particularly wooded area, the phone said 'lost GPS signal' and just assumed I had stopped moving, and wasn't able to pick up GPS again for the rest of the drive. Not a huge deal, because I was just following the road and only had one last turn to make, and I had directions from the car's nav anyway. GPS seemed to work ok on t…
so you're one of those that likes to make cute and endearing backstories to give sympathy to an inanimate object rather than getting irate at a mechanical something that you pay a monthly service not working correctly because the thing to get mad at is out of your realm of control and that anger serve no purpose.
i wish i could be more like you
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently rented a cheap sedan and was shocked: there was a small screen for carplay that didn't interfere with the dashboard and all the other controls (volume, climate, etc) had hard buttons. After a couple of days of driving I could do everything without looking away from the road. Meanwhile the expensive cars are frightening to drive as you need to look away from the road to do anything.
My understanding is that expensive cars have relatively good voice recognition that allows the driver to easily access functions that might be otherwise buried deep in a menu. This doesn't solve the discoverability issue, but it's good from an eyes-on-the-road perspective. I think it's also used as an excuse for why you need to pay a monthly fee for internet access.
I have cars with these services and in my experience they don't work. Even siri to carplay doesn't work very well. The cars are too noisy to even use the car's mic and speakers to make a call, much less talk to a robot.
My experience: Mercedes, Acura and various random rental cars. With a rental I always try to make a call to see if it's gotten any better.
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone from outside the US concerned about this: car inspection standards are state-specific. Many states have far more stringent standards.
Yup. Here's a fun hack - you can drive car in EU on US plates, due to international agreements. In that case, you don't have to follow local car inspection standards, but inspection standards of your home country. Get a plate from US state that has no inspections? You need no inspections at all!
There's usually a time limit on that. Last I checked in my country it's six months before you have to register the car, get local plates, and pay VRT (vehicle registration tax) + VAT. Including the cost of VRT in the VAT calculation, resulting in double taxation.
You can't put foreign plates on an irish registered car without first bringing it out of the country and registering it abroad either. I don't think there's any tax due on re-importing a car that's already been registered however. (you even get the same plate numbers since they're consistently mapped 1-to-1 VIN-to-plate forever)
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am pretty sure that is (or soon will be) illegal in EU. Car needs to be able to call emergency, if accident is detected.
Is there some EU police that go around arresting people if you clip it?
EU "directives" require matching laws to be passed within member states, EU "regulations" apply directly to member states as written. In both cases, enforcement is up to the country you're in.
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
One more reason I'm glad I connect my phone with a headphone jack. Just an analog connection carrying audio. The car doesn't even know what it's playing, as far as I know. Though some cars do seem to extract track names and artist names over the aux jack, so I think there's a little more than just an analog signal?
Audio jack can be used for Square payment transactions so it can't be that isolated
Do you mean the thing for reading a magnetic stripe? It's no surprise that can be trivially sent over an audio interface. That's how recording audio onto tape works in the first place.
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#617I connect my phone to my 2015 Nissan's bluetooth, but just for music. GrapheneOS lets me prevent its access to my contacts, call history, active calls, text messages - anything but music audio. To me (but not the less tech literate, I know), if you're connecting your car to your phone, it's obvious that it is able to gather things about you. That said, because I don't know much about cars, I don't know if the car is…
One more reason I'm glad I connect my phone with a headphone jack. Just an analog connection carrying audio. The car doesn't even know what it's playing, as far as I know. Though some cars do seem to extract track names and artist names over the aux jack, so I think there's a little more than just an analog signal?
One downside I see to this is it being illegal to use a phone while driving, but interacting with your car stereo is fine.
Now I'm wondering if any car stereos have four-pin aux inputs to send headset button inputs or microphone audio back to the phone.
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are the microphones in vehicles actively listening to conversations and shipping them off for analysis? Or is this all purely hypothetical (i.e., they say they have the right to use it, so clearly they must be trying to acquire it...)? All data that they can acquire will be acquired because data can be sold, leading to higher quarterly profits. There are almost no other considerations.
This is reductionist and absurd. You bought an iPhone or an Android phone with a microphone. Will you automatically assume that Apple and Google will turn on your microphone remotely, acquire data, and sell them? If not, why do you assume so for cars?
Well I wouldn't be that surprised if Google started doing that. It's kind of their raison d'etre.
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#619> The worst offender was Nissan, Mozilla said this is ironic; my wife bought a brand new 2020 model year Nissan 370Z 50th anniversary edition in 2021, and it feels like it is from the late 90s. no touch screen (actually no screen at all!), no GPS/navigation, no tracking, no Bluetooth audio streaming(!!) it does have mobile phone Bluetooth connectivity and a terrible backup camera but those are the only bits of modern…
How can it have no screen? They even forced Mazda to put a back up camera in the Miata - which is beyond idiotic.
it really does have no screen at all!
the backup camera shows up on the rear-view mirror, taking up about ~40% of the width. it's really the jankiest thing and is shockingly bad for a 2020/2021 car!
(edited for clarity)
Re: Internet-connected cars fail privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As an European, where we drive mostly stick Enjoy it while it lasts. As of a couple years ago, more than half of all new cars sold in Europe are automatics. That doesn't seem too surprising, I imagine the same logic that made manuals appealing in the past is why automatics are appealing today.
I'm on the side fostering that change. Ever since I got a Mini Countryman with a ZF6. I was forced into an automatic because the car was a hybrid, and now I wouldn't go back to manual. The car was a little janky from a dead stop, when running solely on gas. I probably would miss the precision for maneuvering you get with a clutch. I didn't, actually, because of the electric motor doing these operations perfectly.
It is possible to combin a hybrid drive line with manual transmission, as Toyota is developing:
https://www.topspeed.com/toyota-manual-for-hybrids-game-chan...