Hmm, but I did not agree to those privacy policies nor was I provided with a copy.
This seems like potential grounds for a lawsuit. Anyone have an idea how to demonstrate harm?
I’m pretty sure the EU GDPR requires explicit & clear consent for data collection.
That’s up to a £17.5m fine or 4% of your annual turnover, whichever is higher
That’s nothing.
100% of last years profit. Make them almost die the first time and utterly ruin them if they do it a second.
Sick of these insignificant fines that do nothing to stop these companies.
4% of turnover is massive. Take BMW as an example, 4% of their revenue is 5.7Billion dollars, compared to their net profit of 18.6Billion. One third of their entire profit is absolutely enough to make them do everything they can to avoid it. Also, importantly, they cant get up to creative accounting to minimise revenue, misrepresenting that is fraud, unlike profit when companies get up to all sorts of tricks to artificiality lower it.
Honestly BMW comes out quite well in the scenario compared to many of their competitors. I looked up Citroen, Fiat, Ford & GM and they all were in the range of 60-90% of their profit getting wiped out by a GDPR 4% fine.
I was kinda hoping to find one over 100% profit, but I decided not to spend the rest of my evening looking up annual financials for car manufactures
I see no reason to cap fines to anything less than 100% of gross revenue. An egregious enough violation should kill the company (which has no inherent right to exist, BTW – being granted a corporate charter is a privilege), even if it’s the first one.
Its not even borderline ridiculous. The fines are so low they just incorporate them into operating costs. Jail the entire executive suit and board if a company does this shit, no bail.
I highlighted turnover deliberately. 4% of any company’s turnover is absolutely not something that can be rolled into BAU running costs.
Not least of all, if a company doesn’t fix the violations, they’ll come for it again with a fresh 4% fine.
Edit: typo
How about national security? Russia or NK might struggle hacking the CIA but Nissan or Mercedes ain’t going to have the same security. Now you have hundreds of thousands of multifaceted information collection devices spread throughout the whole country in the hands of companies that would take the seat belts out if they weren’t legally required to put them in.
This is exactly why it’s forbidden to discuss classified information outside of a secure facility… even if you think you’re alone with another cleared person.
Obviously, humans are gonna do human things, but the government has policies in place to try and prevent this sort of leak from occurring.
This isn’t just about government secrets. This data could be used to blackmail someone based on where their car was and at what time or use other data acquired from the car against them.
Researchers found data is being gathered by sensors, microphones, cameras, and the phones and devices drivers connect to their cars, as well as by car apps, company websites, dealerships, and vehicle telematics. Brands can then share or sell this data to third parties. Car brands can also take much of this data and use it to develop inferences about a driver’s intelligence, abilities, characteristics, preferences, and more.
What the actual crispy-fried fuck is this? Drivers intelligence? Sexual activity?!?
“I can tell you’re a very smart man, sir… I’ve got a hunch that you’ll buy this car if I jerk you off during a test drive, what do you say… do we have a deal?”
Sounds like any iPhone or Android with Google out there.
They need to know what subscription porn service would best accompany your infotainment system on your way to work.
I am sure they cannot legally sale data about bystanders who have not agreed to their policy, right? right?
Confirms my bias to not buy newer cars than the early 2010s. My last new car was a 2011. It is just right with OEM Bluetooth hands free but navigation etc is handled by the phone. The controls are still knobs and buttons. Not a screen in sight
2015 with manual transmission, manual windows, manual locks, and knobs as controls. I need to keep this car running for at least another decade because they just don’t make them like this anymore. I dont want the extra weight of electric motors in everything and the cost to replace said motors.
2015 with a manual T? Sounds like something I’m not European enough to understand.
2021 manual transmission/windows/locks, no alarm, no navigation. Lots of buttons and only the radio screen. Love the simplicity of it
which make/model?
I can’t answer for them above, but a lot of people I work with prefer bare bones vehicles and they usually purchase used fleet ones.
I love finding old fleet vehicles. I currently own what used to be a Menard’s rental truck.
Jeep wrangler. Please don’t associate me with the jeep bros and hoes. It is bare bones, I live in the country and need 4wd. 90% of the miles on it are on dirt/mud/snow
I’ll allow it.
:D
Don’t worry I’m on the other end with my Cherokees over the years. Barely lifted, fully loaded, stock, and the quietest exhausts I could find. Drove the rock and mud crowd nuts that wanted to see them super lifted, no exhaust and beat to hell. I love back road driving but I prefer to be a little more civilized about it.
I’ve got a 2017 VW GTI with a mt
Isn’t even VW taking the manual out of those in later models?
You can still get them with manuals new. But everything going electric eventually I guess.
Hey I had a 2016 GTI with a manual and the engine died due to something called crank walk, 95k miles on the stock clutch. Not sure if they fixed it for 2017 or not.
Exactly. I’m keeping my 2010 Mazda 3 for as long as I can for that exact reason. I barely use it anyway. Bought new in late 2009 and it only has 130 000 km on it.
I essentially use it for groceries, and occasionally for visiting friends and family who live outside of town.
New cars have all these bright tablet screens to control everything and it’s a nightmare when driving. You have to focus on the screen all the time to press buttons. It’s super dangerous.
Meanwhile, my car has only physical knobs and buttons that I can reach with muscle memory without even looking. The Bluetooth for my phone with integrated voice commands is a nice feature though.
Sent from my personal data harvester
this makes me love my bike even more
Can’t they just make dumb EVs for now? I mean we don’t have to go all out Starks Enterprises with every EV to attract customers. I still need buttons and things i can feel while driving.
Not related to EVs at all. Every new, feature rich car, is like this.
Camera systems for semi-autonomous driving, blind spot warnings, and parking assist. Always on cellular connections for maps, navigation, and roadside assistance. The tech has been in most cars for a decade or more. It’s the last 5ish years the manufactures realized they could collect all the data and have another revenue stream.They must be loving it, charging customers for 5 subscriptions for 1 car, then sending all that users data from using those subscriptions to advertisers for more profit.
ok.
does this issue not affect EVs or something?
All cars. Mostly newer models.
oh okay, so EVs are impacted too?
Not to mention how much cheaper an EV could be if it had manual windows, less software, less microphones, less screens and just overall focused on being a car before being a smart device, status symbol, or entertainment system.
The problem is tech is cheap, especially software. Even moreso when the data you gain is so valuable.
It’s like you’ll have to go convert like a 2005 ICE car to electric to get a “nice car without tech shit I never asked for”.
Eh, the pre-facelift Hyundai Ioniq electric is the last usable EV without a data connection, I’d say. Was built until 2020.
Nice. Noted, if I get an EV one day.
Whoever makes a “remove the bullshit you don’t want” service for new cars is going to make a lot of money.
Yikes…
Well, this finally gives a reason to be grateful that my vehicle is a very old hand-me-down
Does anyone know of a resource for figuring out where the SIM cards are in all these modern cars? You really can have all the privacy you want if you remove the ability of these spywheels to call home.
Why wouldn’t they be an eSIM?
fair point!
Next best thing would be to install a little Faraday cage over the cellular antenna.
Or just remove it entirely.
Probably the equivalent of where the Death Star’s weakness lies. Hard to reach on purpose.
For sure – but I’m not asking if average joe-asshole can figure out which end of the screwdriver works best. I’m asking if there’s resources for where in the car the black boxes live. Service manuals - ect.
There is. On my toyota it was called the DCM telematics module. Had its own fuse so it was super easy to disable.
interesting! was there any persistent warnings or error messages that popped up or did it just keep on trucking without any user prompting?
The car mic and one of the right side speakers stopped working. The ota updates also stopped arriving, and toyota stopped sending me emails about where my car had been / how long it was driven. The emergency button which calls the toyota help line is also broken now.
There were no warnings from my car at all after i pulled the fuse.
There’s some forum posts about rewiring the speaker back into the system - apparently you only need an extra plug, a little bit of wiring skills, and access through the glove box to get it working again. I havent personally done it yet, but ill get around to it at some point.
Wow! That speaker bit is the most interesting thing to me. It means that the speaker itself is powered or pre-amped in some fashion which makes so very little sense to me. Is the fix simply putting a wire from a->b bypassing the fuse?
Yeah, it goes through the emergency call system, but just connecting the wires and leaving the dcm box alone is supposed to fix it. I have the forum post saved if you wanna look; https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/how-do-i-locate-the-dcm-telematics-unit-on-a-2020-corolla.1693507/#post-14400614
Sorry to say but I bet they are eSim
I sure hope the Mercedes marketing team that analyses the use of their voice assist enjoys my teenage son’s enthousiastic “Hey Mercedes, suck my dick!” and endless variations.
So, what does Toyota say they can do with this treasure trove of information? Well, some of it they seem to treat responsibly. Like the facial geometric features they get when they scan your face to identify your for your driver profile they say will only be processed and stored on your car.
. . . Exsqueeze me? Scan my face? Um. That’s a big negatory.
Hey NAL but that is not legal.
My privacy policy of charging 100mill per bit of data collected is valid if it was.
With phones, doorbells, TVs, cars, and more all recording constantly, will there be any space left that offers actual privacy?
Back to Cave
What do they mean by “genetic information”?
