Car Is a Smartphone on Wheels. Here's Who's Listening (automatictransmission.khoury.northeastern.edu)
60 points by rafaelc an hour ago
hattar 35 minutes ago
I currently drive a mid 2000s Ford truck, which runs great and meets my needs, but lately I got interested in minivans/people carriers. I pretty quickly realized that newer vehicles seem to not just record, but export a lot of driving data.
The minivan market is small. There are really only 4-5 available and every single one sends telemetry data from the car and makes it hard/impossible to opt out of selling your data. Additionally, without pretty extensive work there is no means of physically disabling the telemetry, which forces you to trust they'll honor your opt out request (vs re-enabling it with some update).
I'm clearly in the vast minority on this, but it's so frustrating that there are no options beyond buying and installing a third-party bypass to disable this type of tracking. Worse, I'm aware that the absence of data is data itself. Is my insurance going raise my rates because my vehicle won't provide telemetry for them to buy?
sippingabonedry 23 minutes ago
Ford until recently sold a minivan that was ugly as sin (looked like an '87 Vanagon) because it was a panel van with seats added. They are popular with the campervan community.
As it was essentially a commercial vehicle meant for upfitters turning them into work vans for electricians and plumbers, it would probably be easiest of all to disable telemetry.
From what I can find, permanently disabling FordPass at the hardware level is as simple as unplugging the cell modem or pulling the fuse.
detourdog 7 minutes ago
By a slightly used one that has a 3g modem. My 2018 car no longer can phone home.
helterskelter2 11 minutes ago
I know some models of Ford allow you to pull the modem out. It doesn't even nag you about a connection problem.
mistrial9 25 minutes ago
> absence of data is data itself
oh that is endless.. if you are aware enough to do something about telemetry IMHO do that and don't obsess about loose ends.
helterskelter2 8 minutes ago
I wonder how easy it would be to spoof the data sent back. Either with SQL injections, LLM prompt modification, or just thousands of goatse images.
mahboi 12 minutes ago
if an owner decides they are uncomfortable with the data sharing described within them, they are faced with (arguably) unfair choices:
- 01 accept the agreements regardless of their concerns
- 02 stop using their car's connected-vehicle features - which includes remote start, the app, and other very useful features
- 03 stop using the vehicle entirely
Easy, I take #2. Is that it? I thought it'd phone home anyway.technothrasher 8 minutes ago
I have essentially gone with option 2 in my Audi A3. Every time I turn the car on, it puts up a dialog that warns me that I've made the terrible, terrible decision to not allow remote data and forces me to say, "no, do not turn it on for me now," before I can do anything else on the screen. Every, single, time.
hollow-moe 9 minutes ago
Like #2 prevents the spying. Let's ask some smart TV brands executives their opinion on the matter.
mahboi 4 minutes ago
Smart TVs need wifi to be smart though. The cars have cell modems.
ourmandave 30 minutes ago
Ha ha, you fools! No one is collecting my data from my 22-year-old Scion while I drive past Flock cameras every day.
Wait...
eckelhesten 14 minutes ago
There’s “oh he’s at the grocery store” data,
and then there’s “he’s driving in a way we don’t like, let’s make him pay more for his insurance” data.
tartoran 16 minutes ago
Hope to see a new market for disabling telemetry and phonehome features from cars. It should be legal to do so, if you own the car I suppose. I'm thinking that rigth now few pople even know how much spying their new car does to them but this will change and as awareness grows more and more people will want to do it.
hellon3wheels 6 minutes ago
I'd rather see it as a standard feature than as a new market.
deepsun an hour ago
> As one notable exception, Honda improved its data collection practices to prevent sending precise geolocation to a third party associated with user tracking.
I know what my next car will be.
rdtsc 31 minutes ago
I already like Honda and own models before they were connected to the cell network. But they are still not 100% there current models:
> Amplitude received from HondaLink: VIN, Location. Cross-context tracking: Amplitude received the VIN plus Location from HondaLink — an unresettable identifier tied directly to other personal data.
They are so close they should say "fuck it, we're going to be different, we'll disable all the crap" and then market the heck out of it.
gwbas1c 32 minutes ago
This seems like something that needs legislation to address.
goodmythical 14 minutes ago
I'm sure that will go about as well as protecting the privacy of individuals in the face of "but the CHILDREN!" age verification.
In-vehicle monitoring allows car manufacturers to remind the user to buckle up, keep their eyes on the road, stay off their phones, remind them to take breaks, turn the radio down in tense traffic, remind the driver to take a breath based on increased heart rate to minimize road rage, etc.
Heck, we could really reduce lack of seatbelt related injuries and deaths if we could eliminate the 'drive' function while seatbelts are not properly worn (which we can now check with our AI cameras )
What are you some kind of anti-safe-driving nut?
milkytron 12 minutes ago
Until people care about this, there is no reason for our representatives to limit it.
hellon3wheels 4 minutes ago
Just like video store rental history, I bet they'll start caring about privacy if/when it begins affecting them personally
attila-lendvai 18 minutes ago
good luck!
sadly, politicians are very happy about the centralization of power... they are the same team with the corporations.
YuccaGloriosa 7 minutes ago
And this is without even looking at any Chinese manufactured vehicles...
bnc319 34 minutes ago
While the researchers noted Tesla as having privacy options that can be enabled in the car’s settings, they didn’t seem to test how this changes the # of ATA results. Would have been interesting to see how enabling privacy features changes things.
slowin 32 minutes ago
I wouldn't trust anything Tesla says:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
judge2020 26 minutes ago
This was taken while the data privacy option was enabled. An employee going against policy and sharing it in slack for non-work related reasons does not change whether or not the toggle actually stops x camera from sending data back to the mothership.
filoleg 27 minutes ago
The grandparent comment doesn't talk about anything Tesla (the company) says. They are sharing findings from independent researchers.
prasadvara an hour ago
The ongoing theme of all these responses was shifting the blame to the consumer.
As expected. I think consumers also need to push back on these practices, but the problem is, majority of consumers are tech savy but not privacy savy.
slowin an hour ago
I'd love to push back, I'm not sure what that looks like though. I can't even get an open source/open hardware phone that's decent, let alone a car.
0c3ca83 33 minutes ago
It looks like lobbying for increased consumer protection laws. Either you put on a suit and talk to politicians, or you work with and donate to groups that do.
devin 26 minutes ago
For my part, I will not be purchasing a new car until they bring back physical controls and dump the spyware.
ad_fontes 39 minutes ago
You might want to check out Slate. It's about the closest thing to an open vehicle platform I can imagine.
slowin 34 minutes ago
wiml 21 minutes ago
AlexandrB 31 minutes ago
DMCA needs to be repealed or at least radically changed. Currently it's used as a cudgel by manufacturers to prevent customers from modifying the software in the stuff they buy. Legislation that requires vendors to provide documentation and stuff like "right to repair" would also go a long way.
gib444 26 minutes ago
> I'm not sure what that looks like though
Two wheels and some impressive leg muscles !
steelframe 39 minutes ago
Still driving my GR Corolla with the data communications module fuse pulled.
jmdeon 18 minutes ago
Such a fun car! It's my first fun car and oh man what a toy.
eckelhesten 12 minutes ago
Really? I’ve never heard a Corolla be considered a fun car. It’s a point a to b car afaik.
Not to hate on your experience! They surely are reliable though.
mahboi 7 minutes ago
ok_dad 6 minutes ago
kazinator 19 minutes ago
What is the situation like for people who rip out the entertainment system out of older cars and install Android Auto? How "bad" is that?
jamesforestwest 9 minutes ago
It's so annoying, actually. I’d rather not switch to a newer car because of it.
mahboi 6 minutes ago
I hate everything about newer cars except for the power/efficiency. And luckily I don't drive enough to care about that.
newspaper1 36 minutes ago
I don't trust any of my devices anymore (including/especially my car). At the very least I figure that they're spying on me. In the most extreme cases, such as Israel's terrorist pager attack, they may even kill you.
I wonder if this is going to create a market for older tech/vehicles that were made prior to ease-of-malware integration? I imagine some sort of cyberpunk future where people are scouring landfills for old 16-bit video game console chips that haven't been backdoored.
Ccecil 14 minutes ago
I was kinda wondering the same. Only issue will be when insurance companies refuse to insure you because they can't get the "commonly available" data.
newspaper1 8 minutes ago
Good point, the best bet is probably to move to a walkable city and get an e-bike that you put together yourself.
stego-tech 24 minutes ago
When I buy an EV, one of the first things I intend to do is disable or block the chips using Wi-Fi and/or cellular from broadcasting further. If that means a faraday shield around the computers in question, so be it.
Everything I need can be handled via CarPlay or physical dials/buttons in the vehicle. All this surveillance - on post-COVID priced vehicles no less, averaging ~$50k - is absurd, and I refuse to engage with it.
xelaboi 3 minutes ago
Some cars you can just pull the fuse on the ECU with the modem.
iamronaldo 37 minutes ago
Not to take away from the point but wow absolute ai slop of a website
trickypr 18 minutes ago
I think it does take away from the point. I could not be bothered trying to filter the information out of whatever this llm layout is.