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This makes perfect sense to me. If you plug your phone in to your car and give it permission to access all your shit, then it will access all your shit, and store it locally so that it doesn’t have to re-download all your shit every time. If you don’t want your car to do that, then don’t plug in your phone and give it permission to do that.
Having said that, it is terrifying how much of our personal data modern cars collect. We should be fighting that, but this specific case was not the way to do that.
The article specifically mentions this which implies that it’s stored on the car.
Berla’s software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access
But it’s immediately followed up with
Many car manufacturers are selling car owners’ data to advertisers as a revenue boosting tactic
Pretty much all new cars being sold today, most cars in the last 5 years, and a large percentage of cars sold in the last 10 all have some sort of cellular modem that reports back to home base with all sorts of info, then they turn around and sell it. GM has been doing this for 20+ years at this point with on star which is included in almost every car they’ve made.
Sure, but from what I’m seeing, the article wasn’t about them selling it. It was about them storing it, which only happens after you plug your phone in and agree to their terms.
WTF does that even mean?
Sure they are selling your private conversations, but I only care about the fact that they had to store it to do it?
Your logic holds true as long as that data stays in the car. Pretty sure this ruling allows them to slurp that data up and use it however they want.
They would do that? Just copy all our data and use it for their own interests?
I’m shocked, shocked I say!
Yeah, people fuck kids also, it doesn’t mean it should be permissible
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@xkforce @plz1 although I agree with what your saying, it shouldn’t be a concern.
It is a concern but shouldn’t. If car makers followed a fair privacy stance, would we use more of those features? My guess is …yeah?
Privacy brings more customers so in turn its a solid business move! Is it a profitable one? That’s the one I wanna answer!
I disagree. I want every interaction to be processed individually and iteratively. I look forward to my stereo turning into a BOOM box.
Seriously, these cases seem like giant nothingburgers.
Did you expect that your car wouldn’t have your text message when it’s displaying it on the screen or reading it out loud?
Now, is there malicious intent? Can they be retrieved by technicians at the dealership if your phone isn’t plugged in? Is it forwarding them back to Honda Corporate or Zuck himself? If so, that’s a significant problem that would probably belong to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay…they should be storing them encrypted and only be able to decrypt them when the phone is connected. But I don’t see any mention of that in the article.
I expect to have access to all of my data that the system retains. I expect them to not share my text messages with anyone else. I expect to have the ability to manually delete data.
I prefer that it doesn’t retain information any longer than I have use for it.
That’s not asking much.
But tons of stuff would have to get sync’s every time you connect your phone. Better to have them cached, encrypted at rest, decrypted by key stored in the phone, and just do a diff-sync.
This should be very easily possible with CarPlay and Android Auto. I have no idea if it does or not. But as Apple and Android both control both their respective app and the OS of the attached phone, there’s no reason it can’t (and even pre-compile diff packages for known cars, or expire and purge both sides after X days without a connection)
That may not be true for regular old Bluetooth though…which likely has more to gain in performance from caching the resources due to BTs limited throughput, but also has to conform to standards.
There’s really no reason to cache anything more than a day old. And if you’re using Android Auto, the car shouldn’t need to store anything. It all goes through your phone.
And it says that they are selling your personal data, including your personal conversations to target ads and to law-enforcement
What would even need to be cached? Text is text, you shouldn’t need MMS besides maybe voice, media is streaming anyway, and maps are, again, text. Anything else, your phone is easier and faster, and probably works better.
From the article (did you read it ?)
"Many car manufacturers are selling car owners’ data to advertisers as a revenue boosting tactic, according to earlier reporting by Recorded Future News. "
So yeah at least some of them collecting it are then selling it
Their citation for that is their own article, which doesn’t mention anything about selling data from phones, but does talk about cars generating upwards of 25GB per hour of raw telemetry data. Again, mostly uncited.
The point of that line is to drive intra-site clicks and mislead you into getting more upset and drive the ever important “engagement”. Unfortunately a common theme in modern media.
Oh nice, so people are spending $30,000 min on any new car AND it will record and pass on everything you do in it? Oh and depending on the car manufacturer you may have to pay a subscription for remote entry and heated seats. Its almost as if you are paying for something that you don’t control, don’t own and now works directly to steal information from you. Cool. Cool.
Fucking why? WHY IS IT OKAY TO SPY AND SNOOP?
$$$$$$$$
Wouldn’t it be cool if legislatures made decisions based on the constitution and ethics and weren’t completely driven by corporate profits?
Because a billion people clicked “I Accept” over the past 20 years.
What they really clicked is “this is bullshit and I don’t have time to read all of this, just to use something I paid for”. If companies were required by law to distill their policies into plain English and short summaries then a lot fewer people would have clicked accept. But those ToS started out as nothing more than overly long liability waivers, and over the years the corporations started sneaking more and more exploitative language into them.
What’s the going rate on a horse and buggy these days?
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A large chimp will actually produce something closer to one horsepower than those stupid overclocked horses.
Also, they’ll rip your face off, so win-win
Also the chimp will watch everything you do and call it in on a cellphone.
Bro, never cut off a chimp on the highway …
Yeah, fr. Fuck my face. :(
Somewhere between one and two.
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Would you believe a rabbit and three ducks dressed as a horse?
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At one point I knew of some old order Amish who might sell you one with cocaine in the back. (They didn’t entirely adhere to traditions.)
Maybe cocaine in a horse buggy is basically the equivalent of a Nitrous Oxide system in a car with an ICE engine.
It does make them move a lot faster, especially with a patrol car in pursuit.
Is cocaine like nitrous for a buggy?
Speed is speed ya know
Those horses have great hearing too though.
It sounds like someone needs to bring a similar suit in the EU and point to the GDPR. Where is the agreement to specific processing, the chance to opt out of the data collection, etc.
By design.
I have issue if they:
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Collect unnecessary data if just used to read out messages, relay calls, or navigate
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Store it in their cloud service (i.e. not local on the car)
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Share it or sell it with other third parties
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Cannot delete the data collected
Clearly states in article owners can’t delete data collected
They will say they won’t but there’s nothing stopping them. Isn’t that the actual problem?
Yes, the problem is that there are no laws to stop them and now it was just officially made legal.
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Wild that your own text messages could be stored locally on your car but you have no access to the information
I guess someone should’ve presented the following situations to the court: some CEO of a small-medium company driving his Toyota sends a very important message regarding work. Toyota also gets to read it and is immediately aware of how that’ll affect stock price. Time to gamble on the market, baby!
Situation 2: some researcher driving his Honda sends several files regarding a secret new product to his boss. Honda also gets to access the files and the content of the message. “Oh look, Honda released my product before me!”
Situation 3: After using the snooped information for self profit, the automaker sells it to 3rd parties for further profit.
I think I’ll continue sticking to “dumb” cars… at least as much as they’re available.
The “smart” fad can go fuck a duck.
Or just don’t connect your phone to it. That’s what I do. I’ve never touched the “smart” screen in my car except to adjust the air conditioner.
Ugh, I also have a special hatred for touch screen anything in cars.
Give me fucking knobs and buttons. I don’t want to have to stop looking at the road while I drive a 1000kg death machine because I can’t adjust the air con without looking.
Yes and you paid for that “smart” screen, and anyway does this stop the car from sending anything? No?
You sure showed them, by not using the stuff you paid them for. Yeap.
I paid for a car that I could drive halfway across the country in and be comfortable,not spend a fortune on fuel, and not worry too much about it stranding me on the side of the road. The smart screen just happened to come with it. So it seems to have worked out fine for me.
Are you naturally an asshole or are you making a special effort here?
Yes, clearly I am being an asshole for not defending the automakers.
Probably a stupid question…
What about CarPlay and Android Auto? Is that being intercepted by the car manufacturer?
My basic understanding is Android Auto is pretty much an external monitor for your phone.
Edit: speeling irrers
You got me curious as well so I googled it and it looks like CarPlay just uses the screen as a monitor with no messages or anything downloaded:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252600482
Now I wonder what kind of system these vehicles have that downloads text messages. Is that a function of the Bluetooth connectivity or is it a vendor application?
I connected Bluetooth to my car, and first thing it asked was if I wanted to allow access to my texts, call logs, and contacts.
I admit, i think I did it once. It acted like it didn’t work. Idk. It periodically still asks though. It doesn’t do this if I connect my phone to the car through Andriod Auto.
I believe there’s also some dashboard touchscreens you can separately buy that use CarPlay.
So for now, using one of those instead of the system built into the car is a potential way to circumvent automakers that are keeping your data/texts.
At least if you want the benefits of using a dashboard touchscreen that your phone connects to.
I’m curious about this as well. I know my car can access phone records and contacts for Bluetooth calling outside of AA, but what about everything else? I also thought it was just an external monitor for all of my other apps.
That may be why GM is not going to be putting Car Play and Android Auto next year.
Bingo, they want to hoover up all that data. Between subscriptions for hardware functionality and data mining, they want to turn cars into recurring revenue streams.
My guess is that some non-insignificant (though certainly not large) new portion of buyers will replace their head units, assuming they keep the double DIN standard. It’s trivial to change out currently.
Of course if too many people do it they’ll change the slot and make the wiring harness an incomprehensible mess. One wire now controls your left rear audio channel, rolls down all your windows, and deploys caltrops if the police are behind you. If you wire things incorrectly it locks you in and sets the car on fire.
Definitely, forgot about that, calls do seem to go via the cars factory Bluetooth system. I can unplug my phone mid call and it jumps to the cars own call screen.
So phone number, duration and possibly caller/contact name would be known by the factory headunit and any other information Bluetooth shares with the connect device.
I don’t think the car manufacturer is getting that data, but iirc the part of Android Auto that runs on the head unit does collect data when disconnected, then send it to Google when the phone is connected.
Fuck that shit.
Sick fucks.
For what it’s worth my 2015 Toyota will allow me to connect over Bluetooth but in android I wouldn’t give it permissions to my text message, just audio. It works fine except for the fact that every damn time I turn the car on it asks again for text message access and I have to click no on the infotainment screen.
I got my ballot this Monday and half of the spots to be voted on had only one candidate… maybe remove that shit from the ballot and add things like…“would you like Toyota to know where you are when you send emails about your period?” That would be useful.
You’d think, but that’s essentially the California proposition system, and it has significant downsides.
Care to elaborate on the significant downsides?
I’m in Washington State so I guess it is everywhere.
First step of buying a car, find all antennas and replace them with dummy loads
