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.
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.
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.
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!
@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!
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.
I’m never ever ever going to buy a electric car as long this shit keeps hitting fp. My diesel does 1.18 liters (like amazing on murica meter) and I can drive 900 kns with 1 full tank and a 3 minute reload. I don’t know what they gave you to even consider the step to being electric, but a heavy pass from me.
You know this is about all cars right? Your diesel will also do this if new enough.
That’s the neat part: my diesel car (I’m not the guy you replied to; I just also own one) is old.
In fact, old diesels are actually better because the common-rail fuel pump and “clean diesel” bullshit on the newer ones makes them incompatible with >10% biodiesel. My car can actually be carbon-neutral (simply by putting B100 in it) because it’s old!
Oh, if it is old enough you should run it on old cooking oil. Knew someone that had an old diesel rabbit who was all into alternative fuels and ran it on leftover oil from a fryer, smelled like french fries.
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.
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?
Don’t want to sound like a corporate shill, but this sounds necessary for handsfree functions. To read an incoming text read aloud, there would have to be a copy stored. If one was paranoid, they could just avoid pairing their phone.
Washington Privacy Act (WPA).
Plaintiffs’ operative complaint alleged that their vehicles’ infotainment systems download and permanently store all text messages and call logs from Plaintiffs’ cellphones without their consent.
[…]
The district court properly dismissed Plaintiffs’ claim for failure to satisfy the WPA’s statutory injury requirement. See WASH. REV. CODE § 9.73.060. To succeed at the pleading stage of a WPA claim, a plaintiff must allege an injury to “his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation.” Id. Contrary to Plaintiffs’ argument, a bare violation of the WPA is insufficient to satisfy the statutory injury requirement.
