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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

#91

Post by 6SixTy »

Etheryte wrote: post #57
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of that have to do with a car being electric?

Electric cars are essentially black boxes. When you take it apart, you have largely no idea what any of the chips do, even if you chase down what they're connected to. Is this the infotainment system or is it the infotainment system and a data gathering system that sends all my data off seas? There's no way to know. Old cars don't have that problem. Here's an engine, here's a gearbox, add a radio if you'd like, but b…

Problem with gathering data off cars is that it's really not that effective vs your phone. A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time, while a phone is with you 24/7, likely powered 24/7, and already has telemetry mechanisms built in. An old car with someone using a phone probably still collects the same data as you assert.

And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.

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

#92

Post by madaxe_again »

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #76
jhugo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless I would have carefully taken these down and put them in a box on the day I moved in. And then called them (or better, written to them) and given them a reasonable amount of time (maybe a couple months) to collect their property, making it clear that I would dispose of it after that time expired.

> given them a reasonable amount of time (maybe a couple months) to collect their property Why waste your own time with this? If it's your house, you own everything inside. I would put all the cameras in the trash and forget about it.

Not so. My mother bought a house in France in 1988. The previous owners had a mountain of stuff in the barn that they would come collect “soon”.

25 years passed. My mother started variously selling and disposing of their slowly rotting crap that they evidently were never going to collect, as she wanted to fix the structural issues with the barn, and their stuff was in the way, as it literally filled the entire ground floor.

And then, one day, 30 years later, their children showed up, wanting to collect their inheritance.

They sued. They won. She had to fork over about €100k.

So no, just because you own the house, you don’t own everything in it.

In Europe, it’s also common for you to buy a place, and then when you move in, you find the vendor has taken all of the wiring and plumbing with them. Sometimes they’ll even take things like doors, staircases, floors, you name it.

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

#93

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

salawat wrote: post #89
rcpt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a kill switch The funny thing is that's what cars do to other people because we don't have enough monitoring. My e-bike is limited to 20 because "safety". Your car should be to.

Your e-bike shouldn't be limited. You should get on that.

> Your e-bike shouldn't be limited. You should get on that.

Absolutely. It's the first thing we fix on our 2-wheel transpos.

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

#94

Post by rcpt »

salawat wrote: post #89
rcpt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a kill switch The funny thing is that's what cars do to other people because we don't have enough monitoring. My e-bike is limited to 20 because "safety". Your car should be to.

Your e-bike shouldn't be limited. You should get on that.

You're right. Because my e-bike is of negligible danger to others.

But cars kill tens of thousands every year. Speed limits and red lights being on the honor system isn't working. Luckily technology, like the little GPS tracker in the article, can fix it.

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

#95

Post by tempest_ »

pnw wrote: post #90
orliesaurus wrote: post #77

Anyone that has a Tesla knows what data they track? Or is it dependant on the features you have active ...

There is a list at https://www.tesla.com/support/privacy and you can request a copy. They state never sell or rent your data to third-parties, and sentry and dashcam data is only stored locally. They anonymize the data they do use, presumably for AI training.

> sentry and dashcam data is only stored locally.

That must be new https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

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

#96

Post by aeturnum »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #10

> “can I get free data from the SIM card embedded in the device that I now technically own?” That seems like the next-most-interesting question now that you've determined what the device is. Possibly followed closely by "can I use that free-to-me data in a fun way that might teach the people who installed the SIM to deactivate their devices when they sell them?" i.e. Could you send and receive enough on the connectio…

I work for a company that uses sensors with some kind of 4G connection. I don't know the details but I did ask our sensor guys what would happen if someone removed the SIM card (or whatever it is) and started using data. My recollection is that locking down those SIM cards is the responsibility of the sensor maker. We have an agreement to pay for all legitimate traffic at a contractual rate, but the device manufacturer actually owns the connection and pays for the data themselves.

So you're probably using the connection in violation of the wishes of the responsible party, but it was not clear to me exactly how illegal that would be? Like I'm sure they could charge you with a crime but I have no idea what it would be.

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

#97

Post by Huppie »

IshKebab wrote: post #83
sellmesoap wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Found it:

You jest, but I have one: It's an Opel Ampera-E (in the states that's a Chevy Bolt), it's a 2018 model with all the connected features but first it was disconnected from OnStar with Opel being sold to PSA and later it was fully disconnected because it uses a 3G modem for communication but the 3G network was switched off (in most of Europe anyway...)

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

#98

Post by IanCal »

madaxe_again wrote: post #92
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> given them a reasonable amount of time (maybe a couple months) to collect their property Why waste your own time with this? If it's your house, you own everything inside. I would put all the cameras in the trash and forget about it.

Not so. My mother bought a house in France in 1988. The previous owners had a mountain of stuff in the barn that they would come collect “soon”. 25 years passed. My mother started variously selling and disposing of their slowly rotting crap that they evidently were never going to collect, as she wanted to fix the structural issues with the barn, and their stuff was in the way, as it literally filled the entire ground…

> In Europe

You can't just lump 27 countries with wildly differing laws together like this.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

rcpt wrote: post #79
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…

> a kill switch The funny thing is that's what cars do to other people because we don't have enough monitoring. My e-bike is limited to 20 because "safety". Your car should be to.

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by treyd »

imiric wrote: post #85
kleiba wrote: post #67

As long as privacy-related misconducts are considered petty offenses, these things will just continue. Governments fail to see the implications because the virtual world is too difficult for them to understand. As long as there are no laws that actually get enforced, your privacy isn't worth anything.

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.
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