Nowadays, our cars are anything but a private space — they are full blown data collection nightmares on wheels.
New Mozilla research has revealed that popular global car brands — like Chevrolet, Nissan, Toyota, Kia, Audi, Jeep, Honda, Volkswagen, and more — are collecting your deeply personal data, like your genetic information and sexual activity. This invasive harvesting of information is collected via a web of sensors, microphones, cameras and the phones, apps, and connected services you use in your vehicle.
Car companies are brazenly collecting deeply personal information about people the moment they get into a car, often without explicit consent to do so. And that’s why the Mozilla community is now coming together to force car companies to respect our right to privacy. Add your name to ask car companies to stop collecting, sharing and selling our very personal information.
Find out more about our research on cars in the official launch blog post.
Is there such a thing as open source vehicle system software?
Possibly. But wire cutters exist. Installing custom firmware for a car seems unnecessarily dangerous. Just remove the fuse, cut a wire or go to a local shop and get the comms system disabled.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Some cars will not function properly without a cellular connection. They’re designed that way.
Which would mean that, again, every time you enter a tunnel your car goes up in flames? I don’t know what you guys wanna tell me here but what you’re saying is bullshit.
Then there’s a lot of the US that they’re not going to function properly in.
Not a viable solution since this will likely result in your entire infotainment system or other features being unusable. Not having the radio in your car work or not having safety features work would suck.
Oh no tapes tablet to car. Anyways, why would you entire infotainment system not work? You would just have no internet connection. Radio doesn’t work, yes, however most sane humans stream music anyways which is possible via bluetooth or, in case the comms module would also disable bluetooth, cable. Your choice, private sex life or ✨features✨.
