Technology

Mozilla did a privacy test on 25 different makes of cars and they all failed.

The Mozilla article is a scary article to read, really makes me hate what's happening with cars and phones.

Ah - a Tesla, I assume :)

Which is exactly what I said when it was posted earlier.

The website seems scammy too. Got a banner at the top warning that you don't have GCP or some nonsense thing they're selling for "security".

Nah, this guy is a scammer, looking to cash in on fear mongering.

Not to say what our cars do isn't a HUGE problem , it is. But he just comes across as icky. Not like he wants to help people, just help people give him their Vin and who knows what else.

Look, scammer, you don't need a Vin to tell people how to address this. Just make, model, trim, features. Cause here's the thing... If it ain't got a newer/fancy "entertainment" system or specifically markets remote diags, then it's just local data that I doubt the owner can easily remove.

Having worked on many cars, vendor data is getting harder and harder to access, even though OBDII is a standard. Vendors still implement special codes. Generic readers may not even be able to read secondary systems, like transmission. If that is hard to access, how much harder is telemetry?

Anyway,simply knowing the brand would tell you which telemetry vendor they contracted with. After that it's just based on the model.

Still has good information though.

Prefer this type vs. others.

Consumers in the dark

Most drivers have no idea what data their car is collecting because other than through Privacy4Cars it can be very hard to track down and digest the information. The privacy disclosures for the four cars mentioned above involved between nine and 12 unique documents, and each ran between 55,00 and 60,000 words, according to the Privacy4Cars site.

Older cars appear not to be immune. A check for a 2012 Honda Odyssey, for example, revealed the vehicle collects data from synced phones, geolocation information and compiles personal identifiers and user profiles.

Car owners should use the app to wipe data particularly when they buy or sell a used car and return vehicles to car rental agencies or leasing companies, Amico said, although most people don’t know they should do so.

Four out of five used cars contain the data of previous owners since most owners and subsequently car dealers don’t wipe them clean, he said.

In some cases cars even store pieces of code from previous drivers that can allow old owners to access new owners’ data. Most cars’ infotainment systems also store text messages and other unencrypted data.

Amico’s services aren’t foolproof. The FBI, for instance, still might be able to hack into the car’s systems and extract data. But they do make it a “hell of a lot harder” for them or anyone else to do so.

Even those unworried about getting entangled with the FBI have serious reasons to delete their data, he said.

“If you have a navigation system, you have about a 50/50 chance that you can press two buttons and show up inside the house of somebody because you press ‘go home’ and then you pop the garage open,” Amico said.

This is why I've been dropping money on repairs that cost more than my old car is worth. The old car will keep running for as long as I'm willing to repair it. My new car is bricked if the software ever shits out

I'd add any headline that starts with "This is..."

Because my city planners are dicks and there's highways between me and everything I would need with no clear and safe bike paths anywhere 🙁

Ford owners know all about using their legs

I’ve got an almost 10 year old base model Wrangler…I don’t even have power windows. It couldn’t harvest data if it wanted to. Didn’t even splurge for the automatic transmission. Probably one of the last truly dumb vehicles in the US.

Use an old phone, wipe almost everything off it.

CarPlay (and Android Auto) are designed to only interact with the InCar Entertainment hardware as a display, HID input and limited ancillary hardware. It pushes Video to the display and pulls GPS data, Voice, touch and button inputs. Apple actually dictate that the ICE system cannot store any data except connectivity (Bluetooth connection keys), everything else stays on device.

I am not going to go as far as say that OEM and aftermarket ICE aren’t able to extract information through CarPlay, and I will acknowledge that they will try to get user data through their own interfaces for the benefit of their own interfaces. I would never trust an OEM that forces users to not use CarPlay or Android Auto (ehem, GM).

I am confident that the only reason GM are introducing their ICE platform (codenamed “Edsel”) and blocking CarPlay and Android Auto is because they believe they will be able to profit from selling user information to data brokers. I am also confident that Edsel will be just as disastrous for GM as its namesake was for Ford.

Car play doesn't even give access to the car for most things. Assuming Apple already has your data, it's a good way to keep your data from other companies