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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

#161

Post by extraduder_ire »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #90
akira2501 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This data is cached on the head unit so that finding a contact to call or reading a text message doesn't require 10 minutes worth of Bluetooth nonsense. This is such an early 2000s idea. I'd much rather my car act as a dumb display that shows a copy of my phone screen then an intelligent agent that tries to replicate functionality already extant in my phone.

EXACTLY. This "infotainment" BS harks back to vastly overpriced stock car radios of years gone by. All we need is a place in the dashboard to mount our phones. Phones already have big-ass touchscreens and anything else we want... except of course now the audio outputs have been removed. We should simply have a well in the dashboard with replaceable inserts that snap in to accommodate different-sized phone models, whi…

> All we need is a place in the dashboard to mount our phones.

Where I live, even touching your phone while driving is illegal. Doesn't stop most people, but I'd still not mess about.

I do remember reading news of someone getting cited in california when the model 3 was new, for "mounting a screen visible to the driver" which was the stock touchscreen.

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

#162

Post by JohnFen »

greentea23 wrote: post #111
JohnFen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal solution: I won't own a car that has this sort of capability in the first place, and when I rent a car, I will never allow it and my phone to talk to each other for any reason.

Is that possible anymore? I think all new cars are always online and always collecting data now, and you void your warranty (very different cost/benefit calculus than voiding a phone warranty) if you tamper with the antennas to keep it offline. Very sad state of affairs.

> Is that possible anymore?

Absolutely. I don't buy cars that were made relatively recently.

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

#163

Post by JohnFen »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #150
JohnFen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal solution: I won't own a car that has this sort of capability in the first place, and when I rent a car, I will never allow it and my phone to talk to each other for any reason.

Uh dude any car made in the last 15 years has this capability.

Correct, which is why I don't buy them.

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

#164

Post by JohnFen »

lrvick wrote: post #129
greentea23 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that possible anymore? I think all new cars are always online and always collecting data now, and you void your warranty (very different cost/benefit calculus than voiding a phone warranty) if you tamper with the antennas to keep it offline. Very sad state of affairs.

Exactly why I only buy used cars that predate all this insanity. If we can keep cars from the 40s running, keeping cars from the early 00s running is no big deal. Honestly older fully mechanical/analog cars with manual transmissions are often cheaper and easier to maintain than modern ones with high complexity and DRM on every part. Sadly my desire for privacy will likely prevent me from ever buying electric unless I…

> Sadly my desire for privacy will likely prevent me from ever buying electric

Me too. I'm not that sad about it, though. Saving an older car from being scrapped also brings environmental benefits.

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

#165

Post by JohnFen »

dylan604 wrote: post #69
gav wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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.

most car USB ports are slow charging. my little power port convert provides fast charging. so not only do i get the extra speed, but the assurance that the USB isn't nefarious. which admittedly is probably a bit paranoid, but what if i'm not?! i didn't even like having my phone data sunk to a my own personal car. it just made no logical sense on why that would be useful, so being me, i just assumed it was for nefario…

> most car USB ports are slow charging

TBH, in this day and age where it's difficult to replace batteries when they wear out, I strongly prefer slow-charging over fast-charging. Fast-charging wears out the batteries more quickly.

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

#166

Post by JohnFen »

mattw2121 wrote: post #55
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…

Big opportunity for one of the big car rental agencies to come out looking great by advertising their "privacy focus". They could advertise to customers that they promise/certify that any personal data is wiped between rentals. Sort of like all the cleanliness guarantees that came about right after Covid hit.

> They could advertise to customers that they promise/certify that any personal data is wiped between rentals.

I, for one, simply wouldn't believe any such claim. Too much deception has already happened for there to be any trust left.

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

#167

Post by noman-land »

grepfru_it wrote: post #105
noman-land wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translation: It is 100% legal for car companies (and by extension just about any company) to, when you connect your phone to them, to download your call and text history and then sell it. By extension, that means it is 100% legal for anyone , including any branch of any government to get a copy of your call and text history.

>By extension, that means it is 100% legal for anyone, including any branch of any government Always has been

The "always" in your comment is only a few decades old. This scale of data collection simply hasn't been possible before.

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

#168

Post by vGPU »

amelius wrote: post #118
RandallBrown wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent some time around 2012 working on in car "infotainment" units at a large tech company for a large car company. I was told that the infotainment systems were where a large chunk of their profit came from and differentiating their experience was important to the car company. Of course, they wanted to use decade old CPUs and touchscreens to save money, so the experience was horrible. I left shortly after CarPlay…

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.

Many cars can be modified even now with increasingly integrated entertainment systems. Beatsonic or its various Chinese copies are an example of this, it’s a box that hijacks the video stream and lets you add CarPlay functionality and stuff.

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

#169

Post by andersrs »

tzs wrote: post #155
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?

It's not very fashionable and it's kind of a poor person's car.

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

#170

Post by everdrive »

RandallBrown wrote: post #94
akira2501 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This data is cached on the head unit so that finding a contact to call or reading a text message doesn't require 10 minutes worth of Bluetooth nonsense. This is such an early 2000s idea. I'd much rather my car act as a dumb display that shows a copy of my phone screen then an intelligent agent that tries to replicate functionality already extant in my phone.

I spent some time around 2012 working on in car "infotainment" units at a large tech company for a large car company. I was told that the infotainment systems were where a large chunk of their profit came from and differentiating their experience was important to the car company. Of course, they wanted to use decade old CPUs and touchscreens to save money, so the experience was horrible. I left shortly after CarPlay…

>I was told that the infotainment systems were where a large chunk of their profit came from and differentiating their experience was important to the car company.

I wonder how that could be true. Most car companies have pretty terrible infotainment systems, and I've never met anyone who genuinely loved the infotainment system in their car. (Most people I know tend feel that it ranges from "somewhat annoying" to "good enough".)

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