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

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

#461

Post by milesvp »

snozolli wrote: post #426
milesvp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in this space, and I’ve seen advertised components (most likely SOCs) that had “lifetime” cell data included in the price, costing, on the order of, $50. It is becoming increasingly cheap to have low bandwidth cellular connectivity.

Can you post an example of one of these products? I've been dabbling in this space and I'm having a hard time finding any data service under about $2 - $4 per month.

I'm having trouble finding what I remember seeing maybe 4 years ago. It was an all in one cellular component with an esim. This is the closest I can find to what I remember seeing. It may lead you to some other solutions.

https://1nce.com/en-us/1nce-connect/10-dollars-for-10-years

I remember seeing stupidly cheap prices for cellular chips, and when I looked into it, it looked like they had bought up a bunch of bulk bandwidth on some really old tech, like 2G. The offering wasn't a lot of data per period but certainly enough to wake up and upload a small amount of data regularly. Seemed like an obvious product, I know that if I'm doing a design, I don't want to have to rely on ongoing costs. I'm surprised I can't find more hits like this one. It's possible that peak IoT led to some crazy business models that had no chance of sustaining. I think they may have banking on the network dying before having to figure out how to purchase more bandwidth.

Digikey was no help. Googling "Lifetime Data Cellular Communication plan" did lead to some other potential interesting hits. chatgpt almost gave me interesting things to look for, but it mostly pointed me at consumer good. Good luck.

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

#462

Post by scripturial »

jncfhnb wrote: post #373
Mordisquitos wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first is the lawyer drafting the release being overcautious. The second is a corporation being evil. How was the hypothetical overcautious lawyer able to independently come up with such a specific scenario, which would require intimate technical knowledge? I believe your are missing a third option, which is a synthesis of both. This is that the engineers reported that their sensor data could be used to collect…

Seems more likely that a lawyer simply made it up without engineering justification

It’s not the job of the lawyer to trust what the technical people are saying, it’s to protect the company. The lawyer will want to protect/cover anything even remotely plausible and/or has been seen to be a problem in similar situations.

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

#463

Post by scripturial »

Loughla wrote: post #320
op00to wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love older cars and drove an early 80s Volvo until 2010 or so, but I also love side impact airbags, antilock brakes, and a car that mostly just “works”.

When I was younger I loved having an 84 Chevy Scottsdale. It was a cool looking truck and was easy to work on. I used to love getting under the hood to chase down problems and find solutions. Now my knees hurt when it's cold outside, so crawling around on the ground to fix the fucking u-joint AGAIN isn't that fun, and I also like knowing that my children might survive if we get in a crash; something that's genuinely…

My bet is, once the car companies fully understand the lifetime value of the data, there will be an option to opt out by paying that monetary value up front. My guess is it’ll be an expensive “executive” model used mostly by governments and criminals.

Unless some serious privacy examples get reported and it scares the politicians in California and California puts in place special laws to force “non tracking” to be a legal option.

One final weird option would be. I wonder if you could put children in your car and sue the car company in California because the car company is collecting data on minors without your consent? Do the car terms and condition handle data associated with minors correctly?

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

#464

Post by reaperman »

77pt77 wrote: post #451
malfist wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also opt out of Ford too. They default enable sharing with third party for features, default disable for sharing with data brokers like LexisNexis. It requires you to put in your driver pin to enable that

Wait! Lexisnexis has access to the GPS information?

Pretty sure anyone willing to pay for it has access.

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

#465

Post by sebstefan »

hypeatei wrote: post #312
sebstefan wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should not be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive

This argument doesn't really make sense. The "expectation of privacy" in public doesn't refer to losing all your rights and letting anyone peek into anything when they want to. Vehicles can also be used on private roads or property, so the privacy invading tech would need to account for that (which I'm sure it doesn't, and there isn't a straightforward solution)

There's the way my e-bike works ; The electric assistance is supposed to be limited to 25km/h, you can opt to disable this through clicking a few buttons in an app for most brands, and use your vehicle on private roads only.

Then it relies on enforcement to catch you operating an illegal vehicle on a public road

Unlike e-bikes, your vehicle has a plate, so needless to say, if you get caught speeding on a public road by a camera and your vehicle was registered as having had the thing turned off at the time in the database (i.e. it shouldn't be on a public road), you could imagine getting an additional charge similar to operating a vehicle without a license plate or operating something that's not road-legal.

It makes total sense to me

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

#466

Post by sebstefan »

fsckboy wrote: post #361
sebstefan wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should not be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive

> There SHOULD NOT be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive let's say somebody else said "There SHOULD be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive" Is there some reason I should side with you over them, or just your opinion? If the cou…

>Is there some reason I should side with you over them, or just your opinion? If the courts decided that there was an expectation of privacy on public roads, would you agitate to change the law so there wasn't?

Sure! It would make infringing on road safety much more difficult thus reduce your chances of getting run over by people who are speeding, running red lights etc. And if you're driving, I think everyone would enjoy less maniacs on the road.

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

#467

Post by sebstefan »

telgareith wrote: post #302
sebstefan wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should not be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive

Then leave the US.

Ideally, I'd like that everywhere else too.

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

#468

Post by sebstefan »

Lio wrote: post #305
sebstefan wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should not be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive

Why do you think you should not have an expectation of privacy when driving? Do you not consider reasonable to have an expectation of innocence when going about your business?

> Some other good ones: there should not be an expectation of privacy when performing surgery. There should not be an expectation of privacy when performing the monopoly on the legal use of force.

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

#469

Post by _proofs »

sebstefan wrote: post #466
fsckboy wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There SHOULD NOT be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive let's say somebody else said "There SHOULD be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive" Is there some reason I should side with you over them, or just your opinion? If the cou…

>Is there some reason I should side with you over them, or just your opinion? If the courts decided that there was an expectation of privacy on public roads, would you agitate to change the law so there wasn't? Sure! It would make infringing on road safety much more difficult thus reduce your chances of getting run over by people who are speeding, running red lights etc. And if you're driving, I think everyone would…

at this rate you might as well parade yourself naked around town or city, and advertise your medical history so that you can clearly demonstrate to the world your sanity.

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

#470

Post by Auracle »

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…

There was just an incident in my area that involved OnStar shutting down a hijacked car at the police’s behest and the guy got out and shot and killed another driver in the attempt to carjack him.

So, any car with OnStar apparently already has a remote kill switch. Perhaps they needed the owner’s permission first?

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