I notice that not one comment here, nor the article, notes that this doesn't happen with a Tesla.
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Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
111–120 of 280 posts
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#112Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#113Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#114That‘ll happen when you don‘t have meaningful data protection laws.
My question is why, with their protection laws, Smart TVs and Smart Cars are still sold in the EU?
HN on average is a little behind on the general EU "privacy" stance (though I saw some recent topic about that here). EU was about privacy, a few decades ago. Nowadays it did a complete U-turn and legislates mandatory anti-privacy union-wide laws every year.
- Chat Control law, now all messaging must be intercepted and monitored.
- eIDAS law, mandating that web-browser vendors must now accept state issued root certificates, so that states can selectively and without any legal procedure deploy MITM attacks at will.
- ADDW law, mandating that all new cars must a permanent mandatory camera and microphone surveillance module inside a car, which can't be disabled by law (bye-bye insurance if you will). There also other fun things in it like mandatory autobraking, mandatory auto lane-assist etc.
- ProtectEU laws, demanding backdoors to emails and such (maybe it's the same as Chat Control, not sure).
- AI Act legalizes AI surveillance over CCTV recordings without any judicial approval.
- European Media Freedom (duh) Act legalizes deployment of shit like Pegasus against journalists.
I'm pretty sure I'm missing a lot here too. You get the picture. EU is getting fast track into Stazi 2.0, everyone is fine with it, "because children" /s
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your mileage went from VW->telematics vendor->broker->carfax, thats the chain it usually follows. The fuse stops it but the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record. You could probably find some interesting info if you send out some privacy requests through the chain. LexisNexis and Verisk are consumer reporting agencies, so they have to provide you a disclosure on request. Start there.
Is there usually a fuse that just turns off the telemetry? I would be surprised if that is the case. I could see the design being "if you turn this fuse off to turn off telemetry, you'll also lose these functions: ..." and if they did it "right" they'd make the car non-functional. My car is from 2011 and I do wonder if there is any telemetry in it.
Yeah an electrical fuse for telemetry seems really odd. Even without malice it would be strange if disconnecting power to some part of the computer only affected telemetry.
I could see a fuse for cellular comms, be presumably that would also disable maps, contacting emergency services in an accident, etc. which might be an acceptable tradeoff.
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla charges a $10/month subscription for its connected features, with relatively high uptake because its software is actually great (unlike the dogshit UX of most cars), so it doesn't need to sell data. Plus it just isn't how Tesla operates.
They may not sell the data, they just keep it for themselves. And Elon.
I never thought I would say that, but I would rather have my data hoarded by a crazy rightwinger Elon, than by Stellantis or VW or BMW or Hyundai or any Chinese vendors and being sold to each other plus to a dozens of incompetent or malicious middleman contractors like the one pwned recently in USA. I mean, both alternatives are crap, but 1 piece of crap is slightly better that 100 pieces of crap for the same cost. PS: never owned anything by Elon.
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#117And the DMV (Department of Motor vehicle Services) has also sold registration data. In California, and Texas, they have been fined for this - I'm unsure they aren't completely barred from using a loophole to still do that.
This is why I'm a vocal advocate for having an LLC own any vehicles you might drive. It protects you from the license-plate reading lookup as well from Flock et all. Though I don't know it guarantees you can't be looked up by insurance it's resistance by one more bit of friction. The vehicle I drive now is an old 2012 Lexus owned by Montana LLC and it also has no smart technology and very little insurance costs.
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#118I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here: I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc. Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the…
> turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could This is never enough. You can't trust a software switch. You need to remove the hardware capability if you want to make sure the car isn't spying on you. In the best case, the telematics box has it's own fuse, and that may be enough. In other cases, you need to find the box and unplug it. The service manual will have it's locatio…
Find the telematic's antenna, and put a 50ohm resistor across it. It can scream into it's own private void.
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#119I notice that not one comment here, nor the article, notes that this doesn't happen with a Tesla.
theverge doesn't like Tesla and neither do the vast majority of people here. Why provide a fair and balanced view if it helps someone we don't like?
Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of times I see "I'd like to do the right thing but my spouse isn't on board" is mind boggling. It's wild how convenience trumps everything and then we look back to say, "we should have done better."
Okay it's a red herring here. I also like to use carplay and the phone's GPS is truly awful to use. I also like to dictate texts and take calls in my car. These are things that don't need to be sacrificed if a scalpel is used in place of a butcher's knife. Sometimes it helps to have someone with their priorities in order keeping a reality check on people who don't always stay grounded.
The convenience here for you is CarPlay though. You could instead use a different more accurate gps device you plugin that doesnt have the data leak issues concerned in articles like this one. Then if you really needed you could pull out a sort of external monitor stick it over the other display when carplaying and when needing car-vital features you need the car display for, pull over and temporarily do that thing then pull your extra monitor out again and keep going.
I think maybe being grounded has changed - I would be comfortable doing what I described but I imagine your comfort with your preexisting solution means your ground has shifted and a reality check means you woudl rather give away your data than take the higher friction option?