Carmakers are failing the privacy test. Owners have little to no control of the data they hand over

DoctorTYVM@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 771 points –
Carmakers are failing the privacy test. Owners have little to no control of the data they hand over
ctvnews.ca
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slaps the hood of my 03 Acura shitbox type S

Yep, she's a keeper.

Yeah I plan to drive my Corolla shitbox into the ground. The only problem with my plan is that the earth will only be around for a few hundred million years. Maybe a few billion? And (as long as you do the maintenance on time) Corollas will last until the heat death of the universe.

Its sad. I LOVE the concept of smart devices, the fact that you can do things so much more conveniently with little interaction. They can absolutely be done without being privacy nightmares, but apparently companies are not interested in that.

And apparently neither are consumers

I don't care about my data. I have nothing to hide. Haha they can have my data if they want.

Literally everyone i know

You're missing the larger point. You dont have to have anything to hide for it to be an issue. They can now blackmail you for things they know about you, track you, use targeted advertising, listen in on your conversations. Hell, if there was a need to make you look guilty of a crime, with all the data on you, it wouldn't be that difficult to do.

Doesn't even get into the issues of fighting back against oppressive government, which isnmuch more difficult to do if they're constantly spying on you.

But, you're right, nothing to hide, so it's not a big deal I guess.

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Then they act all butthurt when they get debt collectors harassing them on social media, or repos using location data to repo a car with missed payments, lol. All the J6 people are a great example of people fucking around with tech and committing crimes, then finding out belatedly :)

There's lots of good, non-crime reasons why you might wanna protect your personal data, so you don't get your identity stolen, your wife thrown in jail for an accidental pregnancy, or being any flavor of queer in a regressive state.

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In the case of cars there isn't really an alternative. The study the article cites looked at a bunch of different manufacturers and found the all sucked for privacy.

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Same. I've been slowly adding more and more smart devices to my Home Assistant instance and seeing it all interact is super neat. That said, the search for products that work 100% local and don't depend on the cloud is a total pain, outside of some products using the Zigbee standard and such.

Zigbee and z-wave is the way to go, yeah. They work completely local and disconnected from the internet (in fact, they cannot directly connect to the internet).

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I post this a second time because this post is more active. What can we do to stop the transfer of data? Can we disconnect the antenna/modem that connects the cars to the Internet?

I know my vehicle has a fuse to pull to disconnect the modem.

Dont buy the car.

Thanks for the advice, I'll just walk 26 miles to work each day I guess...

They sell other cars you know?

Great.

Which ones will not spy on me?

Cars made in the 20th century are probably safe.

Safe from a privacy perspective. Otherwise they're very unsafe by modern standards. Minimal airbags. Often no ABS. What ABS that is there is less sophisticated than modern systems. Worse structures for crash protection. No stability control. No traction control.

Plus they're just old. Last year, I spent more on my 20 year old car than I did on my 2 year old car, that includes loan payments on the new car, fuel, tires, insurance, and maintenance.

Get something from this century at least.

Twenty years old is this century, twenty years ago is 2003.

To be specific my car is actually 23 years old. To be really pedantic, it was manufactured in 1999.

I was being a smartass, but im in roughly the same boat mines 22 years old. Also I think yours would be 24 years old unless it was built late in the year.

Go for a car from the 19th century just to be sure. They might miss a few features, such as differential, but if you're worried about your privacy it'll be worth it!

/j obviously.

I guess you’ll have to do your research on that but you saying there is not one car for you is just wrong

This article is literally about how they tested 25 brands and zero of them passed privacy review.

You can take public transportation. Oh wait, that requires governments to actually supply cities with useful and we'll organized public transportation and since you're probably in the US (the only country left that still uses the useless "miles" metric) and the US government has been bought up by (amongst others)car companies, there isn't any meaningful pyblxi transportation left.

I can assure you that miles are quite useful for determining distance, I do it nearly every day. Other than that you're spot on.

So are banana's but we don't use those either

How ironic. I guess you haven't been on Reddit in the past decade.

13 years Redditor, on average 2 posts and 20 comments per day. I was a power user there until the purge

So maybe you were joking and I didn't catch it?

That would've been possible when consumers had a choice but now it's too late.

This has been one of the major reasons I have no desire to buy a new car. I do not want a $30k IoT device that spies on me. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the norm now.

If/when I am forced to buy another, I’ll be looking hard into which ones are the easiest to rip the modem out of. Can’t be an IoT spying device without the internet.

I’m looking into restomods myself. No need to buy a new car and rip it up.

I wonder what your insurance company would say about that.

People modify their cars all the time and my insurance company has no business tracking everything I do either.

Fuck that insurance company. When mine shipped a couple of OBD-II connection boxes for us to install for our auto insurance, I sent them back. They told me I wouldn't get their special discount if I didn't install the trackers in our 2 vehicles. I said I'm not installing your tracker boxes regardless. I continue to have car insurance, and those alleged discounts didn't really amount to much.

I'm reposting this in every thread so anyone can see:

https://www.nissanusa.com/privacy.html

Sensitive personal information, including driver’s license number, national or state identification number, citizenship status, immigration status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, sexual activity, precise geolocation, health diagnosis data, and genetic information.

Not sure why Nissan needs my sexual activity data but I can maliciously comply and make them regret asking for it.

Keep sending images of goatse. But seriously speaking, it's probably not humans that are collating and sifting the data. It's all being fed to an algorithm.

Humans have access to the databases. Now another human can go to the nissan'sheadquarters of their countries, and request by the law of this country, that nissan provides the name of every people who had gay sex in their nissans.

Then they can arrest them and execute them.

That's the issue with collected datas. You ignore when some totilarist government will access those.

All the more reason to poison the data. Make them think everyone has a breadfucking kink and that they spend their Friday nights getting anally inserted baby carrots beaten back out of them by pimp bodyguards for $1,000.

Wtf. Genetic information. So they can take your DNA after bringing your car in for service and sell it?

You joke, but I could see some bean counting fuck being all over that business idea

I was not joking at all - this is exactly what their legal stance is. I agree someone at Nissan is very likely thinking about how to make money with this.

This is why GM is looking to remove android auto and Apple CarPlay. No mediator between them and your data

Can't really go into depth, but I worked for a major automaker, privacy is a joke for newer cars even if you don't pay for the Internet plans.

Is there anything a mildly competent electronics enthusiast could do to disable any outbound data?

Unfortunately not for the company I worked for, all I will say is it was one of the top 5 automakers in the world.

I assume the others were also doing similar things in their cars.

I unplugged the cellular modem in mine. But it was made last decade, so they probably make those harder to find now.

As far as I'm aware, newer cars have them embedded in the head unit.

Ok so, replacing the head unit might work?

Hard to say if it's the same for most of the major auto makers, but from what I had been told by the head unit team, mostly everything for connected services was run through the head unit.

Are dumb cars still manufactured? I don't drive so I have no clue what the market's like.

Holy god. I'm not letting go of my '09 carolla and ebike. What the fuck.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


But drivers are given little or no control over the personal data their vehicles collect, researchers for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Wednesday in their latest "Privacy Not Included" survey Security standards are also vague, a big concern given automakers' track record of susceptibility to hacking.

Cars scored worst for privacy among more than a dozen product categories -- including fitness trackers, reproductive-health apps, smart speakers and other connected home appliances -- that Mozilla has studied since 2017.

The absence of such a law lets connected devices and smartphones amass data for tailored ad targeting and other marketing -- while also raising the odds of massive information theft through cybersecurity breaches.

Japan-based Nissan astounded researchers with the level of honesty and detailed breakdowns of data collection its privacy notice provides, a stark contrast with Big Tech companies such as Facebook or Google.

Further, Nissan says it can share "inferences" drawn from the data to create profiles "reflecting the consumer's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behaviour, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes."

If an owner opts out of data collection, Tesla's privacy notice says the company may not be able to notify drivers "in real time" of issues that could result in "reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability."


The original article contains 874 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

One of the reasons I got a motorcycle instead.

When Tesla came about ,I said privacy in cars is going to be a problem in the the future if people keep buying them and nobody protests. Well, we are now in that future. Crotch rockets may be our salvation.

So many health insurance companies would be going public with fat IPOs. Nothing like motorcycles to make the line go sky-high, lol.

My mom worked in the ER back in the day. Any patients dying of organ failure without a donor just had to make it to the weekend to live (seriously, not joking). People would dust off their cycles for the weekend and then donate and save lives.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


But drivers are given little or no control over the personal data their vehicles collect, researchers for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Wednesday in their latest "Privacy Not Included" survey Security standards are also vague, a big concern given automakers' track record of susceptibility to hacking.

Cars scored worst for privacy among more than a dozen product categories -- including fitness trackers, reproductive-health apps, smart speakers and other connected home appliances -- that Mozilla has studied since 2017.

The absence of such a law lets connected devices and smartphones amass data for tailored ad targeting and other marketing -- while also raising the odds of massive information theft through cybersecurity breaches.

Japan-based Nissan astounded researchers with the level of honesty and detailed breakdowns of data collection its privacy notice provides, a stark contrast with Big Tech companies such as Facebook or Google.

Further, Nissan says it can share "inferences" drawn from the data to create profiles "reflecting the consumer's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behaviour, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes."

If an owner opts out of data collection, Tesla's privacy notice says the company may not be able to notify drivers "in real time" of issues that could result in "reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability."


The original article contains 874 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Be me

Siemens Charger

People using my wifi to get work done

Cool story, bro

Oh, look, somebody thought the tracks were a cool place to park

No parking zone will be enforced with extreme prejudice.

choo choo