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Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

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Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#151

Post by calvinmorrison »

jeroenhd wrote: post #138
calvinmorrison wrote: post #70

nothing. And banning ALPR wont fix anything either. All cars have 4 unique serial numbers broadcast via radio at all times via the TPMS system. you don't even need a camera, just a radio receiver.

TPMS doesn't need to be unencrypted like that, although many car manufacturers do like to save a buck. If you get a car old enough, you won't need to worry about TPMS (but that car will not have been tested against recent crash test scenarios).

TPMS is over the air, each sesnor has a 32 bit unique ID. you have 4 per car... its easy to identify

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#152

Post by elzbardico »

pixl97 wrote: post #61
potato3732842 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first 100yr of automobiles didn't have TPMS and it was mostly fine.

I mean if you consider that death rate per mile driven 'mostly fine'

Frankly? I do. Remove alcohol and drugs from the equation, and driving is an absurdly safe activity. Those intrusive features have very little to do with safety.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#153

Post by calvinmorrison »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #98
calvinmorrison wrote: post #70

nothing. And banning ALPR wont fix anything either. All cars have 4 unique serial numbers broadcast via radio at all times via the TPMS system. you don't even need a camera, just a radio receiver.

> All cars have 4 unique serial numbers broadcast via radio at all times via the TPMS system. Mine doesn't.

do you have some sort of indirect tire pressure checking like wheel speed?

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#154

Post by elzbardico »

mindslight wrote: post #78
SoftTalker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently). All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.

Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope , an…

You don’t see people checking tire pressures where you live?

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#155

Post by rkomorn »

jeroenhd wrote: post #149
mindslight wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope , an…

I don't see it often either, but my government has been very active trying to get people to do bi-monthly tire pressure checks at the very least. I don't think most people know how to do it, to be honest. Partially because people seem to think reading two pages in a manual is some kind of sisyphean task that no mortal should ever be cursed with. It's pretty crazy how little people care. Even if you don't care about t…

Tire pressure management was one of the striking differences between my experiences in France and in the US.

In France, we'd check tire pressure at gas stations on nice machines that had built in dial gauges and were free.

In the US, I had to use one of those hand gauges and the air pumps needed quarters (in most cases, especially if you weren't also buying gas).

In Portugal now, the gas stations also have free air and pretty good pumps.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#156

Post by hdgvhicv »

rconti wrote: post #134
bri3d wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t want people modifying ADAS systems mostly, and the main requirement is SecOC, which is cryptographic authentication but the message is still plaintext. Basically they don’t want third party modifications able to randomly send the “steer left” message to the steering rack, for example.

The ADAS systems mandated in Europe are insanely intrusive. I had a few rental cars in Europe this summer and wanted to send them off a cliff. (and I'm not an auto tech luddite, I've had modern cars in the US with autopilot type systems, lane keep, blind spot warning, rear traffic assist radar, forward collision warning, etc. IMO rear traffic assist/FCW/AEB tend to work really well, autopilot pretty well, and lane ke…

“Lane keep” yanks the wheel dangerously because it incorrectly detects the lane, or because you don’t indicate to pass a pothole on an empty road (which itself would be confusing to other road users)

Forward collision warning has misfired on 2 occasions on me in the last 3 years

The main issue is that so many cars have broken “auto dipping” headlights which don’t dip, or matrix headlights which don’t pick out other cars.

This automation shit should stop, but it won’t.

parking beepers are reasonable, they simply come on occasionally and don’t actually interfere when they go wrong. The rest of it just makes things far worse at scale.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#157

Post by tehjoker »

elzbardico wrote: post #145
M95D wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CAN traffic is unencrypted. It was pretty easy to MITM this module with a cheap arm Linux board And you didn't poison their databases and statistics with fake data?? OMG, I'm thinking of buying one of these cars just for this opportunity! (No, I'm not.)

Oh man. Logging insane average speeds and ludicrous acceleration during rush hour. Deliciously tempting idea.

A data scientist will simply filter out impossible data when conducting an analysis

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#158

Post by humanrebar »

vel0city wrote: post #51

I went to Carvana to get some idea on what my car might be worth. I gave them the license plate, and it gave me a questionnaire about specific trim and options along with asking about the current mileage. I couldn't remember the exact figure so I guessed rounded to the thousand. The app complained and wouldn't take it as they knew the mileage which was some 150ish miles more. Apparently my car has reported the mileag…

So why did they have you fill in that field then?

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#159

Post by RealityVoid »

bri3d wrote: post #48
CamperBob2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear the next version of Miata will be an encrypted CAN like most other cars have moved to As I understand it, they're required to do that now if they want to sell in the EU. They emphatically do not want anyone tinkering with their cars.

They don’t want people modifying ADAS systems mostly, and the main requirement is SecOC, which is cryptographic authentication but the message is still plaintext. Basically they don’t want third party modifications able to randomly send the “steer left” message to the steering rack, for example.

I integrated SecOC on some ECU's at work. I hate myself for it. I frigging hate what they're doing with this. I think it's going to make cars less repairable, less modifiable. It's a horrible horrible stupid initiative in the name of "cybersecurity".

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#160

Post by ghaff »

mindslight wrote: post #78
SoftTalker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently). All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.

Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope , an…

Checking oil at once universal full-service gas stations used to be extremely common. Think it pretty much went away in late-70s petroleum shortage in the US. With modern cars, it just doesn't make a lot of sense given any semblance of scheduled maintenance adherence.

I (again) have a low pressure warning on one tire (getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere). It looks fine but I'll get my compressor out tomorrow and make the computer happy. A lot of modern tires can look pretty good even if, as you say, they can be quite a bit below recommended limits.

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