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Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

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Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#71

Has anyone proposed a solution that balances privacy and consumers’ desires for connectivity features? EDIT: Sorry, I meant a legal requirement.

The real solution is to nuke the onboard modem if you must have a new or modern car. This can almost always be done with minimal side effects, because cars are expected to work even in areas without cell service.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also surprising how little money is being made. If I was buying a new car and there was an option where I could pay 61 cents for the privacy respecting version, it would be a no brainer.

oh god yes... but I am carrying my self chosen surveillance device with me every single time I enter a car.

At least your self chosen surveillance device doesn't end up reporting rapid acceleration events to LexisNexis and then Progressive.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#73
post #8

I yanked the bridge between the rest of the car and the cellular board.

I am surprised this hack is almost never mentioned in "your car is spying on you" articles. Removing the cellular modem is about as important when it comes to privacy as degoogling or disconnecting your "smart" TV from the Internet.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#74

Hyundai received 61 cents per vehicle from Verisk. Honda received 26 cents. California's $12.75M fine against GM, the largest CCPA penalty ever, is less than the $20M GM made from selling the data.

It's also surprising how little money is being made. If I was buying a new car and there was an option where I could pay 61 cents for the privacy respecting version, it would be a no brainer.

For that they would need to market it as a rolling spyware

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#75
> Some of it may even raise your insurance costs.

> [...]

> The information they harvest can include [...] whether you buckle your seatbelt, drive too fast or brake too hard.

In a way this is good -- I want bad drivers to be incentivized to change their behavior.

Just need to legislate away all the other, actually creepy stuff. Just.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a HN user recently on a related post explaining to everyone that they don't need privacy because they personally aren't harmed and a murderer was caught by one of these cameras. It turns out protesters don't need privacy, either, because of various reasons. Same for women seeking adequate healthcare, I'm sure. Or LGBT people attempting to exist. Sorry, I am strawmanning a little. Actually, we'll simply have…

The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved. You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras. But like you say, many things which have been crimes were based on unethical laws. It's easy to two sides this issue, less crime would on a whole be a good thing but some…

China is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with their ethnic minorities being about as different from the Han majority as the Czechs are different from the Slovaks. if China was to experience Western levels of diversity, inclusion, and cultural enrichment, then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#78

For those wondering, you can still buy all the major components for a simple pre-computerised car from the aftermarket, and classic cars are definitely going to continue rising in value.

until they are outlawed. we are nowhere near done thinking of the children.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#79
I know braking data is used to identify dangerous road sites / locations, and dangerous prior driving behavior of this car. The dangerous road site versus driver can be disentangled by statistics: if the road site / location results in similar braking behavior in other drivers, its more associated to the site, if the braking behavior is more correlated with the driver, its more attributable to this driver. However most people tend to have relatively regular commutes due to location of their home, their job, and their working hours, their shopping patterns etc. so it still entangled with other drivers, since they will tend to encounter the same subset of drivers, also having their own relatively steady probabilistic patterns.

For example, when a user suddenly brakes with large delta v, is it really due to this driver's aptitude to not predict the results of their driving decisions? Or is it because they frequently encounter the same reckless drivers?

It seems this could also be detected: for each braking event, consider a disc of sufficient radius and similarily downscore other drivers in this disc, use proper Bayesian inference of course, not naive linear score incrementing decrementing...

Simply downrating the driver of the braking vehicle risks taxing the less reckless chickens vis-a-vis the dare's in chicken or dare scenario's, naive calculations risk taxing specifically those parties that decrease the total kinetic energy in potentially dangerous situations, if the reckless drivers don't flinch even if it would have gotten them into trouble if a chicken had been a reckless dare.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#80

Hyundai received 61 cents per vehicle from Verisk. Honda received 26 cents. California's $12.75M fine against GM, the largest CCPA penalty ever, is less than the $20M GM made from selling the data.

It's also surprising how little money is being made. If I was buying a new car and there was an option where I could pay 61 cents for the privacy respecting version, it would be a no brainer.

Surely it costs more than that to run the internet connection as well. I know they choose to do that for other features and probably get good network deals, but the cost is tangible and I would be surprised if it worked out long term.
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