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It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

theregister.com

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Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#151

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #132
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt! I did this though: https://imgur.com/gallery/krRXQwP And I even installed extra inputs for a guest to plug into on road trips, and the original CD player.

Do you not find it overheats in sunny weather, though? I have an old car without any sort of fancy infotainment system, and I always end up with my phone overheating during long drives into the sun.

It was a concern but didn't happen often. I did consider making some kind of reflective roof for it.

The phones are too tall to fit there now (even the original SE), so there's going to have to be some rework anyway!

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#152

Post by lsaferite »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #148
amelius wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you bought the car they now have a monopoly on the software that is available. There should be laws against this type of monopoly.

There is. You can swap out the head unit with an aftermarket one.

Most modern cars I've seen don't seem to have old DIN sized head units these days.

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#153

Post by happytiger »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #148
amelius wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you bought the car they now have a monopoly on the software that is available. There should be laws against this type of monopoly.

There is. You can swap out the head unit with an aftermarket one.

You used to be able to. It’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#154

Post by bikson »

bonton89 wrote: post #67
zeteo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful with that or it might just eat up your battery trying to contact cellular towers at maximum power with a short retry interval.

Maybe an other way around solution? Is is possible to build some kind of dummy cell tower that supersedes real ones?

Good luck with that. This is illegal (in europe)

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#155

Post by tzs »

andersrs wrote: post #96

Reading these stories makes me love my shitty old 16 year old Civic. It's modern enough to have cruise control, AC and a fairly decent engine. But not so modern that reliability is compromised in the name of fuel economy and it's also not a "rude-ass car" with dumb features nobody asked for. I could afford a better car of course but I don't drive much and I'm not inspired by these rude-ass features.

What is shitty about it?

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#156

Post by M95D »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #151
cameronh90 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not find it overheats in sunny weather, though? I have an old car without any sort of fancy infotainment system, and I always end up with my phone overheating during long drives into the sun.

It was a concern but didn't happen often. I did consider making some kind of reflective roof for it. The phones are too tall to fit there now (even the original SE), so there's going to have to be some rework anyway!

Don't make it reflective. The light would reflect again in the windshield.

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#157

Post by tzs »

kleene_op wrote: post #97

> "To succeed at the pleading stage of a WPA claim, a plaintiff must allege an injury to 'his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation,'" the judges ruled. So.. It's okay if I record private conversation from high ranking states officials as long as I don't harm their reputation with it? It's okay if I stole state intelligence as long as I don't harm my country with it?

No and no. Those cases would be brought by a prosecutor under criminal law where mere violation of the law counts as harm to the state.

This was a civil case. Civil cases tend to have more concrete harm requirements.

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#158

Post by Symbiote »

gav wrote: post #59
bri3d wrote: post #15

I dug into the technical details here over the last few days and as usual it's not quite as sinister as the hand wringing: * Automotive head units are just embedded computers. Most run Linux, QNX, or Windows CE, with some proprietary UI system on top. * These machines usually store data in an onboard database in flash (sometimes just SQLite). * Sometimes, phone data is captured using standard Bluetooth mechanisms (Me…

> * If you use a rental car, Factory Reset the head unit when you leave. If I rent a car, I won't pair my phone at all, even going so far as to use a car charger instead of the provided USB ports.

I recently rented a car, and the built-in navigation wasn't enabled. The assumption seemed to be that you'd connect your phone.

Driving in the country was fine with just audio navigation, but I had to connect my phone to get the display once I was driving in a big city. "Take the freeway exit" "Use the right lane" "Use the left lane" was coming too quick if I relied only on the audio.

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#159

Post by tzs »

andix wrote: post #38
acd wrote: post #31

Not in eu

Probably not even if you voluntarily "agree" to it via some button and a very long incomprehensible legal text. And especially not if you're forced to agree to use a specific feature. But nobody really knows if car vendors really follow the laws. Facebook/Instagram seem to collect a lot of data anyways, and probably will just pay a huge fine in many years, when they get sentenced for it.

Would GDPR actually do anything in this situation?

From what I understand the data the car acquires is not being sent anywhere. It just gets uploaded to the car and is used to speed up operations that would be slow if the car had to talk to the phone over Bluetooth when it needed the data.

The car vendor is not processing your data. They are selling you a device that processes your data. I'd have guessed then that you are the controller for this data processing and so you are the one responsible for GDPR compliance.

In the case of a rental car, I'd have guessed that the rental company is the controller, and their GDPR obligation would be to tell you that the car caches data if you pair your phone with it and for them to erase that data when you return the car.

Re: It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

#160

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

M95D wrote: post #156
ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a concern but didn't happen often. I did consider making some kind of reflective roof for it. The phones are too tall to fit there now (even the original SE), so there's going to have to be some rework anyway!

Don't make it reflective. The light would reflect again in the windshield.

It might indeed.
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