A Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors.
They are going to be very bored reading my texts.
Ah, the classic “nothing to hide” response.
How did that quote go again? “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”? Even things you think may be innocuous can and will be used against you if given reason to.
I have plenty to hide I just don’t do those things texting on my phone. That section is very boring. Compartmentalize people.
The car maker will gather your mundane data, and all other services you, your friends, parents, parents friends and employer use will also do that. Then data will be deanonymized, traded, aggregated, traded around some more and aggregated again. Suddenly all actors have a complete profile on you and your social network, where they can very accurately infer many data points not explicitly collected. Good luck gdpring every company in existence. Your profile is eternal and growing. Also 20% of entities holding copies of your data also didn’t care to keep your data safe and lost it to the criminal element. Somewhere on the dark net you can now buy access to a database where you can query for that shopping list you sent over your cars entertainment system and also your sexual preferences and social security number.
That’s a very good reason to not connect your phone to your car.
That’s a very good reason to not buy any car which has this interception “feature”.
That’s a very good way of saying don’t buy anything built in the last five years
OK, I finally read the original allegation and this is grossly irresponsible reporting. We can put our pitchforks down. The plaintiffs never even claim that the automakers can access your text messages in the first place. This is entirely about the car’s hardware locally caching the messages it displays, some of which could possibly then be read from the cache using specialized and not commonly available equipment.
Is it something to be aware of? Sure. Is something the average person should be concerned about? Not really.
encrypt everything, layers and layers of encryption and then feed them garbage
I bought my first car this year, I am very happy with it, it is a 2021 Seat Leon PHEV, but shit like this is terrible.
I remember several years ago when I noted that cars had started comming with emergency SOS buttons and apps, that made me realize that there had to be a built in mobile phone connection, and after reading some more, yep, I was right, automakers put in a cell phone module with an eSIM that is allways connected, meaning the car keeps talking to the automakers servers, even if you don’t connect a phone.
This means that it is worth it to the automakers to add a phone module and continously pay for a subscription for every car, even if you don’t use the feature, that is scary.
