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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

#71

Post by bobim »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
bobim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, global surveys show how oil, gas and coal are going. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

Well sure, we’re consuming more fossil fuels because they’re cheaper. Nothing I’ve seen suggests we can switch primary production to clean sources. It would be more expensive. But that’s far from a hard limit. I’m genuinely curious if someone is credibly speculating we are unable, versus economically unwilling, to replace fossil fuels with clean options.

My understanding is that there are no clean sources able to replace fossil fuels. Or we would need to cover useful land with solar panels (largely produced in China with coal electricity btw).

Anyway, we should transition to EV and these cars manufacturers bad practices are just keeping old inefficients cars on the streets.

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

#72

Post by kaibee »

bobim wrote: post #35
Night_Thastus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will not be "energy starved" anytime soon, short of an actual apocalypse happening. What we use for energy may change, but energy won't.

We live on free energy, free as in "dig a hole and voilà": energy. No nuclear, no solar, no wind can replace the sheer amount of energy we extract out of oil and coal. I’m afraid privacy in cars is going to be the least of humanity’s problems unless we make fusion working.

If only there was some giant naturally occurring fusion reactor that we could siphon a bit of power from to power our things.

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

#73

Post by karaterobot »

> "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. "Contrary to Plaintiffs' argument, a bare violation of the WPA is insufficient to satisfy the statutory injury requirement."

I think the title is misleading. Unless I'm missing something, it sounds like the decision wasn't that it's legal to harvest text and call logs, it was that these cases did not demonstrate an injury was caused as a result of doing so. Presumably if the plaintiffs proved some injury other than not wanting it to happen, things could have been different.

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

#74

Post by Night_Thastus »

bobim wrote: post #35
Night_Thastus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will not be "energy starved" anytime soon, short of an actual apocalypse happening. What we use for energy may change, but energy won't.

We live on free energy, free as in "dig a hole and voilà": energy. No nuclear, no solar, no wind can replace the sheer amount of energy we extract out of oil and coal. I’m afraid privacy in cars is going to be the least of humanity’s problems unless we make fusion working.

As fossil fuels get more expensive to acquire and renewables get cheaper and cheaper, it's really a self-solving problem.

Energy is necessary for modern society to function. It's not going anywhere nor will it decrease just because one source of it is inconvenient.

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

#75

Post by noman-land »

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…

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.

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

#76

Post by DANmode »

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…

> It's not quite as sinister

> Here's the fix that 95%+ of the users impacted will never use

Hopefully you only had HN users in mind while writing your comment, otherwise you've intentionally downplayed one of dozens of security & privacy risks "our moms" are dealing with daily.

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

#77

Post by DANmode »

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.

Apple Car will be marketed out of both sides of their mouth, just like oh-so-private iOS devices are marketed today.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by DANmode »

bri3d wrote: post #36
client4 wrote: post #29

I've been trying to figure out how to disable my trucks cellular antenna without disabling any other systems. It's proven more difficult than I thought.

The easiest way to do this is usually to unplug the antenna and replace it with an RF terminator. The vehicle will simply think it is always out of range of cellular service. Unfortunately most modern vehicles require a lot of finagling to disable the telematics control module itself without causing error messages. It would be nice if some regulator would mandate an "easy-off" function for vehicle telematics - some k…

Unfortunately, the regulators (NHTSA) are inches away from mandating cellular be added to cars (if they haven't already pulled that lever).

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

#80

Post by DANmode »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #45

I can believe iOS doesn’t offer protection against this garbage. There’s no way to connect a phone to something and on the device side say “this is an untrusted connection; don’t give it shit”. It’s especially frustrating with rental cars. But I don’t even trust my own personal car!

The feature you're looking for doesn't really sound like the nontechnical "it just works" experience they're advertising.

Check out GrapheneOS if you have yet to!

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