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Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

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Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#111

Post by qwertox »

sdoering wrote: post #90

Reading this and reading the comments I became aware again how lucky I am to be born in a place with strong customer protection and strong data protection laws. Wow. I imagine a dealership doing this here in Germany. Even repossession isn't that easy in Germany. In Germany, you have to go the official route and get the vehicle seized by the bailiff. Installing a tracking device without clear informed consent would go…

Isn't it common now for our car manufacturers to store a log of GPS data in an ECU? I could have sworn I've once read about this around three years ago.

This German article [0] from 2022-02-03 for example mentions cars storing some usage data:

> In summary, it can be said that data is constantly being recorded for all cars, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the usage profile, the intensity of use, the number of drivers or even the driving style. A few examples of data evaluation and transmission:

-

Usage profile:

Separate storage of the kilometers driven on the freeway, country roads and in the city

Number of individual journeys, broken down by kilometers

Charging and discharging cycles with time, date, mileage

Utilization data of the combustion engine in plug-in hybrids

Regular GPS data with status report of important vehicle data

Hours of operation of the vehicle lights, separated according to individual light sources

-

Driving style:

Number of electric belt tightenings (how often do you brake hard?)

Entries for excessive engine speed or temperature (speeders)

Charge and cell voltage of the drive battery

Duration, how as long as the driver uses the various modes of the automatic transmission (continuous/manual/sport)

-

Intensity of use/number of drivers:

Number of adjustments of the electric driver's seat (allows conclusions to be drawn about the number of drivers)

Number of media inserted in the CD/DVD drive

Duration and time d he phone calls

--

[0] https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/ausstattung-technik-zu...

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#112

Post by dismalpedigree »

sva_ wrote: post #101
mig39 wrote: post #8

I love that the skills I learned in the 80s are still relevant today. Interacting with serial ports. AT commands. This stuff hasn't changed much.

I wonder how common this UART protocol is in electronics? Being able to communicate with arbitrary electronics using the $30 Bus Pirate device seems like a very fair price.

Wide spread. Its very easy to work with. UART aka Serial TTL or just RX/TX is native to almost all chips. There is no standard protocol though, so unless its a modem (AT commands) or you have a manual you will likely have a hard time communicating with it. If you want to see what is going over the wire get a logic analyzer. Typically ~$30. Connects to USB and comes with software to decode the messages. Its read only so to speak.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#113

Post by cimnine »

Why wouldn't they hire a person that is a professional electronic forensics expert to look into such a device? (Yes, cost, most probably.) I say this as «not connecting ground» sounds like a rooky mistake. Using their procedure – i.e. by what looks to me like amateurishly poking around the device – they would have destroyed anything that could be brought forth as evidence in a court.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#114

Post by janandonly »

sdoering wrote: post #90

Reading this and reading the comments I became aware again how lucky I am to be born in a place with strong customer protection and strong data protection laws. Wow. I imagine a dealership doing this here in Germany. Even repossession isn't that easy in Germany. In Germany, you have to go the official route and get the vehicle seized by the bailiff. Installing a tracking device without clear informed consent would go…

In the EU, there are several laws in the making or already enacted which will make it MANDATORY to detect speed limits [1] and slow down your car when it goes too fast. Also, collision data and maintenance data will be automatically transmitted in newly sold cars[2], [3].

[1] ISA, Intelligent Speed Assist: https://etsc.eu/intelligent-speed-assistance-isa/

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2022/163/oj

[3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2021/1244/oj

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#115

Post by joshvm »

If you or a previous owner ever took out black box insurance, they install a GPS/accelerometer in your car. The insurance companies rarely bother to remove the trackers, so if you've had multiple policies you may end up with a couple of units wired in. Sometimes the mechanics will rip out the old ones, but they put them in different places and they're too busy to check everywhere (install is a 5 minute job). Usually they'll tell you that the device will be turned off once the policy ends.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#116

Post by teknopaul »

kogepathic wrote: post #95
rob74 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to read FUD into it, you can, but the fact is that (a) a person found a GPS tracker in her car and (b) she is an EFF supporter, which led her to contact them and get it examined. So the title is entirely justified, if a bit clickbaity. But to then say they should have refrained from publishing the article is exaggerated. Actually I was glad I read it and appalled that it seems to be routine for car dealer…

> But to then say they should have refrained from publishing the article is exaggerated. The article as-written provides almost no useful information apart from an anecdote about one person finding a GPS tracking device in their car and contacting the EFF. > Given how many people have been surprised to find this specific GPS tracker in their cars (as mentioned above) it’s possible that many car dealerships are instal…

They don't know "how many cars these devices are installed in"

They did investigate "a single individual who was not targeted"

You can't write an article about something you haven't done.

They explain why they did it in the article.

FUD is fear uncertainty and doubt, they did the exact opposite. Dispelled the FUD with an investigation. And then published it.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#117

Post by teknopaul »

cimnine wrote: post #113

Why wouldn't they hire a person that is a professional electronic forensics expert to look into such a device? (Yes, cost, most probably.) I say this as «not connecting ground» sounds like a rooky mistake. Using their procedure – i.e. by what looks to me like amateurishly poking around the device – they would have destroyed anything that could be brought forth as evidence in a court.

This is "Hacker" news.

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#118

Post by kogepathic »

teknopaul wrote: post #116
kogepathic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to then say they should have refrained from publishing the article is exaggerated. The article as-written provides almost no useful information apart from an anecdote about one person finding a GPS tracking device in their car and contacting the EFF. > Given how many people have been surprised to find this specific GPS tracker in their cars (as mentioned above) it’s possible that many car dealerships are instal…

They don't know "how many cars these devices are installed in" They did investigate "a single individual who was not targeted" You can't write an article about something you haven't done. They explain why they did it in the article. FUD is fear uncertainty and doubt, they did the exact opposite. Dispelled the FUD with an investigation. And then published it.

> FUD is fear uncertainty and doubt, they did the exact opposite. Dispelled the FUD with an investigation. And then published it.

Please point out the original FUD the EFF is refuting in this article.

Their title is sensationalist, a more accurate title would be, IMO, "a car dealership installed a third-party GPS tracking device in a vehicle" but anything more is a stretch because they have n=1 here. But you can see my proposed title is certainly less interesting than their portrayal.

> You can't write an article about something you haven't done.

Yes, and my point is that they are the EFF, not hackaday. The article does not inform the reader of how common GPS trackers are in vehicles, or what privacy implications they have, because the EFF just took the lack of a response from the sole vendor they contacted and went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would expect an organization that's supposed to advocate for privacy issues and carries clout to have covered at least some of the privacy concerns in more depth. FFS, they couldn't even establish if the device is still (or ever was) transmitting the car's location.

Geolocating cars is not new or novel, OnStar (GM) has had this capability for ~20 years now. [1] If the EFF wants to raise awareness about the privacy issues of vehicle location technology, they could have easily picked a more common case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar

Re: Mystery GPS Tracker on a Supporter’s Car

#119

Post by sdoering »

janandonly wrote: post #114
sdoering wrote: post #90

Reading this and reading the comments I became aware again how lucky I am to be born in a place with strong customer protection and strong data protection laws. Wow. I imagine a dealership doing this here in Germany. Even repossession isn't that easy in Germany. In Germany, you have to go the official route and get the vehicle seized by the bailiff. Installing a tracking device without clear informed consent would go…

In the EU, there are several laws in the making or already enacted which will make it MANDATORY to detect speed limits [1] and slow down your car when it goes too fast. Also, collision data and maintenance data will be automatically transmitted in newly sold cars[2], [3]. [1] ISA, Intelligent Speed Assist: https://etsc.eu/intelligent-speed-assistance-isa/ [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2022/163/oj [3] htt…

Wow. Did not know this. Moving more and more in the wrong direction imho. Thanks for the links. Need to take a closer look.
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