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What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

blog.koenvh.nl

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Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#281

Post by chgs »

afh1 wrote: post #25

The scary part is not the GPS installed by the fleet company that previously owned the car, which in all likelihood was just forgotten there, but the GPS and eSIM that comes with most (all?) new cars and that in most (all?) new cars cannot be disabled. Apart from privacy concerns of your data being used or sold by the car vendor, government outreach is also a concern. There was a bill announced in the US for all new…

Even without the privacy aspect it’s a problem. Last weekend I was driving home in my ICE car guzzling on those dead dinosaurs, and maps on my CarPlay unit went haywire, first I was slightly off to the east by say 50 metres, but this got worse and at one point I was 10 miles away.

Unplugging my phone and the location snapped back to he correct place. Seems that in CarPlay an iPhone will believe what the car says about position, and when it’s wrong, tough.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#282

Post by chgs »

gruez wrote: post #131
markdown wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you put it in airplane mode while in a car and then disable airplane mode when you get to your destination? What's the point of that?

>then disable airplane mode when you get to your destination? Why would I need to disable it? If you're not using the built-in navigation (which probably costs money anyways) and are using carplay/android auto instead, you should be able to leave it in airplane mode indefinitely. What critical functionality would I be missing out on?

OP isnt talking about putting the car in airplane mode, but the phone.

The point is that you are already tracked via your phone (which is likely kit in airplane mode), so there’s not a massive gain to preventing car tracking.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#283

Post by everdrive »

lostlogin wrote: post #166
sellmesoap wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's find a list of electric cars without some form of network connection!

Pretty sure my 2018 Leaf doesn’t.

Not sure when this will end, but through 2024 the S and SV models (ie, the two lowest trims) for all Nissans do not have network connectivity. This is one the reasons I bought a 2024 Nissan Frontier over some other vehicle.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#284

Post by KineticLensman »

rglullis wrote: post #263
KineticLensman wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural southern England here. Public transport is non existant where I live. You need a car if you want a life. I lost my driving license for medical reasons and have spent two years without driving. I am really conscious of what a car means in terms of having a social life, working, etc. If I was younger, I would have had to relocate

Tell that to the Amish. Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.

> Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.

Yes, it is not the natural state of things but for many people it is the actual state of things. I absolutely hate the fact that I live in a car focussed society but that is where I do actually live. And because of my investment in my house and garden I don't want to move

> Tell that to the Amish.

I had to count to 10 before responding here.

Perhaps you didn't notice the bit where I said I have spent two years without a car. It is something I have thought about a LOT. And have been impacted by. I don't have a convenient Amish community nearby to help me put up barns in my backyard, or even to lend me a horse to ride to the local B&Q when I need to buy a new tool of some sort. I deeply wish there was better public transport - I am not a petrolhead - but there isn't and won't be for the foreseeable future.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#285

Post by Arch-TK »

treyd wrote: post #100
imiric wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't with governments. It's with people. Most people don't care about their privacy. Even if they do, the majority of that group don't care enough to give up the conveniences they get in exchange for it. This leaves a small group of people to fight for protecting their privacy, as well as of those who don't care about it. This is an uphill battle against trillion-dollar corporations and the governments t…

I've more recently found that "laypeople" really do care about their privacy and but are unaware about what data it's possible for corporations to collect. They do rightfully uncomfortable when they have their questions answered, but feel powerless to be able to do anything about it.

In my experience, trying to tell an average person the kinds of things that companies can do with their data, which the companies themselves have admitted to and written into privacy policies, just gets you labelled as a conspiracy theorist.

The things companies can, will and promise to do with your data are sometimes so far fetched that people assume they're impossible. At least this was the case 5 years ago, haven't tried persuading anyone in recent years.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#286

Post by parkaboy »

I bought a new Ford F250 a few years ago and it came with a built-in fleet management service/subscription with GPS tracking. I flipped it a few months later to a dealer and I had to proactively bug them to take over the access to the service. Would have been very easy to spy on the future owner.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#287

Post by herczegzsolt »

More than likely an iButton reader to identify the user and a business/personal use switch.

The switch basically does nothing, but tha state of it is logged in the tracking system along with the routes the car takes. In many EU countries you tax differently for personal use, so the switch is sort of important for tax reasons.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#288

Post by simonjgreen »

herczegzsolt wrote: post #287

More than likely an iButton reader to identify the user and a business/personal use switch. The switch basically does nothing, but tha state of it is logged in the tracking system along with the routes the car takes. In many EU countries you tax differently for personal use, so the switch is sort of important for tax reasons.

If you continued reading to the bottom of the article you would find validation for your hypothesis

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#289

Post by TeMPOraL »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #272
hnlmorg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shape, speed, comfort (better seating), body work, windscreen, lights, gears, radio, air conditioning… I could go on If people just wanted to drive around in vehicles that were equivalent to golf carts then everyone would own a quad bike instead of a car. Cars have been around for more than a hundreds years so it’s astonishing to me that some people cannot imagine what a car would look like without the “smart” featur…

And luddites been criticising cara for being too modern for hundreds of years too.

The Luddites haven't been criticizing cars for anything, given how they came and went 50 years before a first proper car was built.

And, if anything, the Luddites were not anti-technology, they were anti-being fucked over by capitalists. The problem they rose up against wasn't the automatic looms, it was the way they were deployed - to replace skilled workers instead of augmenting them, depressing salaries and eliminating jobs across the industry. The Luddites weren't fighting progress, they were fighting to keep themselves and their descendants from destitution.

Alas, since technology was involved and technology is magic, the misconception about the Luddites has spread wide and persists to date, conveniently distracting everyone from what the actual problem was. Compare with everyone today whining about "tech bros" and the supposed folly of "solving social problems with technology", which is both wrong and entirely missing the real problem, which is the same as the ones Luddites fought and lost to.

Re: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

#290

Post by djaychela »

akira2501 wrote: post #181
actionfromafar wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be daft but it seems like a great idea. Same weight and everything. In France you get a decent subsidy if you convert your ICE to EV.

Your engine is part of your crumple zone. You do not want your battery to be. Same reason the fuel tank is usually in the back of the vehicle.

Engines do not crumple, and a proper electric conversion will retain appropriate space.

Fuel tanks are not "in the back" for good (see: ford pinto) reasons.

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