Tracking and technology in cars is being weaponized by abusive partners

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/31/technology/car-trackers-gps-abuse.html

by edward • 3 years ago

88 130 3 years ago

CharlesW• 3 years ago

ghaff4• 3 years ago

This case seems difficult. On the one hand, maybe the restraint order should have been enough? On the other hand, it’s at least somewhat understandable that the car manufacturer would be hesitant to cut the owner off from access to their property.

The broader issue is that if a couple has turned on all sorts of data and account sharing it’s easy to see how information leaks can easily happen in spite of efforts to plug them by one party.

HnUser12• 3 years ago

Yeah. This sounds more like a user problem and also very specific one in this case. Sounds like car was granted to her use, but officially it was still under her husband’s name. So Mercedes doesn’t seem to be at fault.

Privacy concerns with manufacturer aside, I find the tracking feature to be very useful due to the amount of theft and break-ins we have over here in Canada.

pluc4• 3 years ago

Solution: tune it right out of the shop and never bring it to your dealer for scheduled maintenance. Would love to finally see the hacking community pay some attention to infotainment systems.

Cars are becoming like PCs or phones, pre-bundled with a bunch of shit that you'd want to selectively purge upon acquisition but somehow car manufacturers don't have to give you the option.

jncfhnb2• 3 years ago

Cars are too expensive to mess with if you’re rights to do so are not protected and risk warranties

anonym2914• 3 years ago

For DIY efforts, sure.

Blatantly untrue for commercial modification though. There is no shortage of performance shops that will take a car that makes a couple hundred HP from the factory, replace a bunch of internals, completely void the warranty, and bump it up to the 4-digit range of horsepower, albeit mostly with a small handful of the overall number of makes and models, as not all cars are good platforms for high performance.

I suspect the reason that we don't see much of a commercial privacy modding scene for cars is that there simply isn't sufficient demand.

The manufacturers may be educated, listening, and watching us, but most people would simply prefer to bury their heads in the sand and choose to act ignorant, deaf, and blind in the face of this problem.

It's almost like non-technical folks have developed a "learned hopelessness" over their privacy, which is really sad in some ways. That's the same thing people living under many brutal, murderous, totalitarian dictatorships developed too after their privacy was obliterated, like in the former Soviet Union.

pluc4• 3 years ago

For sure, it's an expensive gamble. For me, I took my car from the dealer to the tuner on day 1. We actually found some factory issues like turbo hoses disconnected. Then I replaced a few parts for compatibility and performance and tuned it Stage II. That was 6 years ago and car still runs A1 (and I drive it like I stole it). Never brought it in for servicing.

teeray• 3 years ago

My dad is a car guy from way back, and laments today where “the computer fails in a new car and that’s it.” Entirely true. What he doesn’t see is the wonderful counterbalance we’ve had with open source in traditional computing against this proprietary nightmare hell now plaguing cars.

I’ve tried to tell him that a computer in the car should be a diagnostic asset, completely usable with open source tools. Imagine seeing the timing and dwell on an old car in curves on the screen rather than using a timing light (as delightful an analog solution that is) and dwell meter. Instead, computers have been used by auto manufacturers as a lock in tool—“check engine,” bring to dealer.

ClumsyPilot2• 3 years ago

counterbalance we’ve had with open source in traditional computing

Created by massive activism, unpaid labour of millions of passionate people who otherwise are very expensive and have a very well paying job.

This is not a practical and sustainable solution for most things. In fact it does not work at in when we have to deal with embedded software even in something as simple and cheap as a phone, TV or a smart coffee machine, let alone a car.

We need a bigger stick, legislative solution with serious criminal sanctions. Misusing user's data should be treated like a bank misusing customer money - serious business that must be audited.

gonzo412• 3 years ago

Imagine bricking a Tesla with a shitty jail break from the internet. 99.99% of owners will not do that. Hell I don't even mess with the speed controller on my ebike. If there were standards that auto's had to adhere to then maybe. but until then messing with engine management on computerized cars is going to be a no go. Especially if you f--k things up and put yourself or others in mortal danger.

ClumsyPilot2• 3 years ago

speed controller on my ebike

Bafang? Got a nice programming cable, always adjust throttle behaviour and soft start.

RunningDroid• 3 years ago

Would love to finally see the hacking community pay some attention to infotainment systems.

There are a handful of open source headunit projects, I think PILOT Drive* is the most interesting even though it seems to be fairly recent

*: https://hackaday.io/project/191356-pilot-drive-an-open-sourc...

anonym2914• 3 years ago

Removing the SIM card or a specific fuse from the car is a strategy that has worked well for me. On a lot of these "connected" cars, they use a pretty ordinary cellular data connection. Break that connection and you break the data leak.

Bonus points for spoofing GPS to show the car in Antarctica or something like that, so that the trustworthiness in the accuracy of the entire dataset (and thus the commercial value) goes down, instead of just you choosing to opt out.

autothrowaway11• 3 years ago

Without saying too much; don't expect that to work forever. A requirement for the car to call home is in development, just still a lot of debate on what the consequences are if the car can't reach reach the home server.

mixmastamyk2• 3 years ago

Probably spills upon connecting a cable at the dealer.

pluc4• 3 years ago

I don't know that cars have SIM cards that are constantly exchanging information... most of what I have been exposed with what a data dump obtained during (official) service that is then sync'd with the vendor. SIM card would be a pretty flagrant breach of privacy, and they'd have that shit on file instead of having plate-reading cameras at every intersection

kyledrake4• 3 years ago

Tracking a car also has value for finding it after losing it in a parking garage, determining whether it's been towed or stolen, rescue help in case it's in a more remote area during a blizzard, etc. There's more legitimate use cases here than illegitimate ones, and its odd to to ignore all of them and presume this tech is almost exclusively for stalking like this article is implying.

Auto theft in a lot of places in the United States has spiked so much since COVID that being able to track your car is critical infrastructure at this point*, particular if you drive the cars that are easy to steal right now (I have a friend that had his car stolen 3 times). I think being able to steal a car with a USB cable is a much worse problem for car manufacturers to deal with right now and I really hope we don't hand criminals yet another theft tool (on top of their unlimited supply of dangerous weapons) by eliminating car trackers by law or self immolation.

* https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-hyundai...

hellcow• 3 years ago

Crime in a lot of places in the United States is so bad right now

Citation needed. Crime rates have been falling for decades. [1]

I have no doubt there are individual areas with high crime, and for those isolated pockets, people could opt-in to buying and installing tracking devices on their vehicles.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

kyledrake4• 3 years ago

One of many articles on the topic https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-hyundai...

sbuk2• 3 years ago

Property theft has been on the decline while the use of device tracking technologies, among other simple deterrents and measures, have simultaneously been increasing. Correlation?

AlexandrB2• 3 years ago

Even with Hyundai's idiocy, vehicle thefts last year were lower than they were in 2008[1] and lower than at any time in the 90s or 80s. Decades where being able to track your car with GPS was a sci-fi fantasy.

A lot of the recent fear of crime feels like it's being driven by sensationalist reporting and overstating of the facts. E.g. "crime has doubled" has a very different meaning when you realize we were at record low crime rates just a few years ago.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-ve...

kyledrake4• 3 years ago

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-hyundai...

louthy3• 3 years ago

… a relationship you should probably end immediately if they are doing this …
… tiny handful of creepy boyfriends …

Way to downplay the very serious issue of domestic abuse and coercive control.

“However, at Refuge we’re keenly aware that technology is often used by perpetrators of domestic abuse to further isolate, intimidate and stalk their partners from their support networks, making it even more difficult for women to escape their abusers“ [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/12/tech-playing...

robertlagrant2• 3 years ago

Way to downplay the very serious issue of domestic abuse and coercive control.

And also to isolate it to men as the perpetrators.

AlotOfReading• 3 years ago

There are legitimate uses for tracking, but it's a pretty reasonable ask for companies to mitigate the illegitimate uses and respect consent about the collection to begin with.

I've seen that internal data before. It's profoundly creepy and not something I'm okay with the manufacturer having on my family, but I can't meaningfully opt us out of.

pc865• 3 years ago

Crime in a lot of places in the United States is so bad right now

Categorically false. https://www.rubyhome.com/blog/property-crime-stats/

"Official" FBI stats only go through 2019 but the rates match so I have no reason to believe that the graph showing a marked and steady decline in property crime rates decreasing is incorrect. Property crime rates have decreased every single year for two decades and look to be approximately half what they were 20 years ago.

Every single year people regurgitate this "crime is so bad right now!!1" meme that never seems to die and is always wrong. Crime is decreasing, it has been decreasing in almost every geographic area in almost every category. If you're younger than Gen X this has been happening for most of your entire life. We live in one of the safest times in human history, most of us reading this live in one of the safest countries in the world, and Kias being easy to steal or some idiotic DAs refusing to prosecute petty thefts out of some misplaced sense of social justice does not change reality.

kyledrake4• 3 years ago

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-hyundai...

anonym2914• 3 years ago

most of us reading this live in one of the safest countries in the world

with many of that group living in some of the most high crime cities in the country - SF, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Denver, NYC, Chicago, Boston, LA, etc.

rufus_foreman2• 3 years ago

We don't have statistics on the number of crimes committed. We have FBI statistics which are statistics on the number of crimes that local law enforcement agencies reported to the FBI. Not all crimes are reported to law enforcement, not all law enforcement agencies report to the FBI, and not all crimes reported to law enforcement agencies that do report to the FBI are included in their reports.

We also have surveys of the public asking if they have been a victim of crime, for example the National Crime Victimization Survey.

According to the FBI statistics, crime is down recently, according to the victimization survey, crime is up recently (both say that crime is down since the 1990's). According to the victimization survey, the majority of crimes are not reported to law enforcement.

From the 2022 victimization survey summary, https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimizat...:

"The violent victimization rate increased from 16.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons in 2021 to 23.5 per 1,000 in 2022.

From 1993 to 2022, the overall rate of violent victimization declined from 79.8 to 23.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older.

In 2022, about 2 in 5 (42%) violent victimizations were reported to police.

Motor vehicle theft victimization increased from a rate of 4.3 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2021 to 5.5 per 1,000 in 2022."

So whether you believe crime is up or down is going to depend on what data you choose to believe. In the victimization survey data, crime is slightly down recently in rural areas, about the same in suburban areas, and up by a large amount in urban areas.

According to my security cameras, crime in my neighborhood is down this year, but still at a much higher level than 2019.

darksaints• 3 years ago

I don’t know about anywhere else, but in 2020 the Seattle PD just flat out stopped doing their jobs. They had been dragging their feet for years but now they literally won’t do anything. I’ve called the cops for a violent crime in progress, requested that they contact me, and then find out later that the cop assigned had closed my report and had already contacted me and I said everything was fine now. lol.

The effective result of that is skyrocketing crime without skyrocketing crime reports. What use is a crime report if the police won’t do anything about it?

steelframe2• 3 years ago

Letting other people track my location all the time is a very steep price for me to pay for any perceived benefit.

losing it in a parking garage

I stop for a second and pay attention to where I parked my car. Maybe even take a quick picture of the surroundings with my phone. The "lock chirp" using my key fob usually makes up for the times I'm not quite sure where it is.

determining whether it's been towed or stolen

Most municipalities where you're likely to be towed have an impound vehicle search website. I'm not going to let other people track me all the time just for a bit more convenience on the extremely rare occasion that my vehicle might be towed or stolen.

rescue help in case it's in a more remote area during a blizzard

I check the weather and don't drive into remote areas during blizzards. I suppose if you're inclined to do that, you might want someone to track you all the time so they can maybe rescue you when you make those kinds of choices?

Crime in a lot of places in the United States is so bad right now that being able to track your car is critical infrastructure at this point

If you are unfortunate enough to park a Kia in Seattle or San Francisco, I guess you've got a problem. But tracking my car is more for the benefit of my insurance company in that case.

kayodelycaon• 3 years ago

Remembering to do the right things isn’t possible for everyone. So you’re kind of blaming the victim here.

I’ll always have the parking garage problem due to poor memory. Sometimes I remember that I take a picture but my brain can’t remember to do that reliably. Building habits is nearly impossible for me. I even have a documented disability saying this happens, so it’s not for lack of trying.

My solution to solving this problem is to not require habits but to preemptively account for my blind spots. AirTags have been life changing for me.

kccqzy• 3 years ago

You have a patchwork of solutions to deal with the lack of tracking. Some people don't like the mental overhead of that patchwork of solutions and would rather have GPS tracking. It's a valid trade off.

It is however typical HN mentality to assume that nobody wants tracking whereas it is a matter of individual choice.

a very steep price for me

Great. Now have some empathy with people for whom the price isn't steep at all.

otteromkram• 3 years ago

The "lock chirp" using my key fob usually makes up for the times I'm not quite sure where it is.

Ah, yes, the "letting people who don't care know I'm now home or letting everyone know that I'm walking away from my unattended vehicle (so robbers better not touch it)" alert everyone loves.

Do you do the thing where you hit it a bunch of times to blast the horn and show off that 90s tech because you need people to see how cool you are?

giantg25• 3 years ago

In most cases the car trackers are trivially simple for criminals to defeat. They really aren't a big detergent. Even if you're using a good aftermarket one, its not a detergent but a recovery tool - if they know about it they can usually disable it.

If you're friend has had their car stolen so many times, what are they doing about it?

1shooner• 3 years ago

I don't equate the desire to have the option to not be tracked with 'handing criminals another theft tool', and I also certainly don't consider having my movements monitored to be 'critical infrastructure'. These sentiments are just acquiescence to mass surveillance for the sake of property control.

Both the tracking described in the article and the usb vulnerability are symptoms of an industry that has irresponsibly deployed potentially dangerous technology.

AlexandrB2• 3 years ago

It's "I have nothing to hide" until suddenly you do. But by then it's too late to do anything about it.

anonym2914• 3 years ago

And yet every single person who says this continues to lock the door when they sit down to use the restroom in public.

They're doing nothing wrong. They have nothing to hide. Everyone knows what they're up to.

And yet, they have this strange, inexplicable desire for privacy in spite of those three things!

deaddodo• 3 years ago

They have nothing to hide.

Most people would take umbrage with this portion of your argument. They clearly do have something to hide; whether it's from shame, embarrassment or politeness.

pests• 3 years ago

It's just social expectations. No one wants to see it. Please don't allow yourself to be exposed to others, might even be children attempting to open the bathroom.

Yet, walk into a gym changing room and you'll see balls swinging everywhere. They've done nothing wrong, nothing to hide, everyone knows what they are doing - but yet, they don't care about privacy?!

Social expectations set privacy expectations. People conform to those expectations outside of their own desires or wants for privacy / non-privacy.

jevoten• 3 years ago

You also rely on many people being able to hide things if you want a pleasant society - journalists, whistleblowers, activists, anyone doing politically sensitive work (e.g. Tor or Signal developers, labor organizers, even small businesses trying to enter established markets) that could be destroyed by a smear campaign.

Last but not least, any new political party can be crushed by information asymmetry - if every minor indiscretion of their members is outed, while the ruling parties can keep their own sins hidden, thanks to a friendly intelligence apparatus, no new party will ever upset the status quo. It also means the old parties will be compelled to remain friendly with said intelligence apparatus (wonder why section 702 of FISA got extended again [1]?)

In other words, even if you personally somehow go your entire life without having to hide a single thing, unless others can hide things, you will one day wake-up under tyranny.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38799561

swells34• 3 years ago

Honestly, the "I have nothing to hide" line is flawed in itself, regardless of whether you actually do or not. With enough data about someone, a narrative can be built that they are guilty of something. And even if it is finally determined that they did nothing wrong, it is a massive waste of time and energy to prove that. See "railroading", the US Law Enforcement's greatest national past time.

genewitch6• 3 years ago

"Three felonies a day"

Nevermark• 3 years ago

AND: data on someone provides a the means to coerce them in hard to identify ways.

Would you reveal everything about your financial, work and personal lives to someone you were in a business negotiation with? Just because they wouldn't do anything "illegal" with it?

Information about each of us is leverage. Even when used legally, it gives away our power over our lives to others, to use against us.

Tanoc2• 3 years ago

"I have nothing to hide" is a horrible statement and I wish people would stop using it as a defense for why they allow invasions of privacy and breaches of personal rights. Saying you have nothing to hide isn't an absolution of any perceived guilt, it's a forfeit of your personage and control.

For example, you drive the same way anybody else does on the road, you "have nothing to hide" in that sense, but you still wouldn't want your insurance getting up to the minute data on where you're driving and how because that places the control of your finances in their hands. You cook your breakfast the same way everyone else does, you have "nothing to hide" in that case, but you still wouldn't want your neighbours to be able to see a livestream every morning of you cooking without you knowing.

bobbylarrybobby• 3 years ago

Very simple response to “I have nothing to hide”: “ok then, mind if I go through your emails and text messages?”

rrr_oh_man3• 3 years ago

Best response that worked for me so far:

"Cool, can I install a camera in your toilet? Or do you have something to hide?"

Spivak• 3 years ago

This is a nothingburger story. The legal owner of a car as far as Mercedes is concerned has access to it. This is really a story about the courts being inept at "declaring" that the woman in question owns the car but not actually transferring the title and loan into her name.

"Your phone may be tracking you (when you don't actually own it and you're on your abusive partner's iCloud account)."

baz00• 3 years ago

My abusive ex partner used to poll me to work out where I was. I divorced her. You can do that with your car too if it's prone to abusing you by proxy (get something that doesn't have any intelligence in it at all).

quadrifoliate• 3 years ago

"Connected" car services are complete shit and I never opt in to them.

That being said, this also seems like the basic legal system needs to catch up in some of these cases.

For example, in the first one, the wife had been granted sole use of the car but the husband's name was on the title? That doesn't even seem legally consistent to me, leaving aside all technology matters.

genewitch6• 3 years ago

On 2023 subaru even if you're not opted in it appears that they OTA update the firmware. The "driver steering assist" has gotten weaker and weaker since we got a 2023 crosstrek. It used to only completely shut off on 1 road near my house, now it shuts off on about 40% of roads, with no other changes. Car is about 6 months old.

Modified3019• 3 years ago

Fortunately my (work provided) Dodge Ram allows me to turn steering assist on or off and have it stay that way until I change it.

I actually like it when rarely doing hours of highway driving, but for my normal use it’s absolutely unsuitable on the narrow and degraded backroads where I’m often squeezing by farm equipment. Definitely don’t like it trying to second guess me having to go over the line.

eimrine• 3 years ago

What is an injustice when having a working SOS button requires you to give away a lot of potentially sensitive data.

tastyfreeze• 3 years ago

SOS doesn't have to be always tracking location. Ships and airplanes have radio beacons that only activate when something bad happens. Cars could do the same.

xhkkffbf• 3 years ago

It's sad that the man in this story died and can't give his side of the story. It sounds like the Mercedes did exactly what it was supposed to do-- answer questions about its location to the titled owner. The fact that this woman had bad credit and couldn't take over the title in the process of the divorce just put the car and the Mercedes network admins in a strange position of trying to decide which legal claim to believe.

mannykannot2• 3 years ago

...put the car and the Mercedes network admins in a strange position of trying to decide which legal claim to believe.

Mercedes has lawyers as well as network admins, and the fact that the victim had a court-issued restraining order is not the sort of thing that one can simply choose to believe in or not.

If the law currently supports Mercedes' response, it's time for the law to be updated to recognize the increasing scope for this sort of abuse. The husband forfeited a certain amount of freedom of action through the behavior that earned him the restraining order, and neither Mercedes' interest in the car as security on a loan nor the many other advantages of tracking a vehicle necessitate, let alone justify, Mercedes' response.

s1artibartfast• 3 years ago

I fully disagree. This isn't about Mercedes' interest in the car, but the legal owner's interest in the car. This whole article is misleading in that it refers to it as "her car" while it simply wasn't. Replace it with "his car" and everything makes sense.

Mercedes has lawyers as well as network admins, and the fact that the victim had a court-issued restraining order is not the sort of thing that one can simply choose to believe in or not.

It has nothing to do with belief in a restraining order. A restraining order says nothing about transferring the car title.

thepasswordis• 3 years ago

I’ve noticed a trend with some subgroups of people, which I ended up copying.

I share my location with a lot of people on iMessage. Basically any time I have ever had to meet somebody, if they’re a close friend or family member, I share my location with them indefinitely and never turn it off, and lots of people do the same thing to me.

I think this is like the 2020s version of giving somebody a spare key to your house.

ghaff4• 3 years ago

There are very few people I’d grant indefinite sharing to. I’ll forget that it’s there and I can think of all sorts of scenarios like white lies about why I can’t attend some event they’re putting on. Maybe not the end of the world but just aren’t many people who need that sort of deep visibility into my day to day comings and goings. It seems very invasive.

And the spare key analogy seems poor. I can trust a friend not to use a spare key to facilitate robbing my house which they could presumably break into anyway—without my minute to minute movements being any of their business.

eek2121• 3 years ago

That is nuts. I don’t even share my location with my spouse.

AndrewKemendo• 3 years ago

This is the first time I’ve ever heard of any anybody doing that at that level of scale. That doesn’t mean that you’re incorrect certainly but I don’t think that’s as universal as you think it is.

wesleychen• 3 years ago

It’s pretty universal among my friends in their early 20s, spanning across the country.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

I do the same. Loads of people do it with me. Folks on Android get it on Google Maps. Folks on iPhone get it on Find My Phone.

It's been years we've been doing this. Honestly, I can't imagine not doing it.

maerF0x0• 3 years ago

As others have said, tracking data has value. The problem is a lack of (or abuse of) our rights and companies which serve their customers more than themselves.

Simply put we need the perpetual right to own, revoke, and control the flow of our data. We need the perpetual right to real privacy from intrusive governments which, ironic to the consitution, are beginning to resemble and exceed the very governments they formed to overthrow.

fnorder• 3 years ago

"To access content, please click 'I relinquish all my rights and expectations to privacy, and my right to challenge this agreemment.'"

Buttons840• 3 years ago

If there's the will, we can make such agreements unenforceable. Recognizing their danger, we can even make the mere presence of such a clause in a contract illegal, punishable by a large payment to whoever reports the clause.

TaylorAlexander2• 3 years ago

Plenty of laws prevent certain rights from being relinquished by contract. For example California employment law prevents employers from controlling what you work on in your spare time on personal equipment, with few exceptions.

I have had friends at Apple, Facebook, and Google question whether they could work on open source projects on the side and I highlighted this for them.

Note that employers often still put unenforceable restrictions on these things in their contact which I think sucks. It confuses employees who don’t know their rights and chills valuable work on open source.

https://www.aegislawfirm.com/blog/2023/01/california-moonlig...

giantg25• 3 years ago

I don't want this type of tech in my vehicles at all. But all the examples they are giving have to deal with who the owner is. If the name is on the title, then this is a law issue, not a tech issue. Most of these technologies can be disabled by removing part of the connectivity hardware (I've done it before).

This is a similar paradigm for other things like phone/family tracking, smart home, etc. Far too many people don't give a shit about privacy or security until they are a victim. Then the call is for some third party to make it secure for them rather than go with the more permanent and secure fix of doing away with the unused features (like removing the connection).

api• 3 years ago

A while back after reading about how many above ground atomic tests we did in the 1950s I found myself wondering: what are we doing right now where future generations will look back and ask "what were they thinking?"

Other than burning all the carbon, I think this insane totally unregulated, opaque, user-hostile, leaky, insecure surveillance panopticon is a good candidate for a large scale human self-own.

Privacy loss is a little like climate change. The problem builds but nothing obviously bad happens right away, so people don't notice or don't really care. Nothing bad happens until it does but when it does it's too late.

One of the things I've found is that Europeans seem much more concerned about privacy than Americans. I've chalked this up to their experience in the 20th century with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and the Soviet sphere of influence. Maybe Americans need their own experience with totalitarianism to show them why surrendering all privacy for convenience and free candy might not be a great idea. (Who knows... we might get it soon!)

Another class of very bad things that can happen is foreign influence powered by all this surveillance. We've already seen some of this from Russia, but China is smarter and better funded and probably has 100X the data and access. If they decide to invade Taiwan expect a full information warfare assault against the US population powered by fine grained surveillance data and delivered via social media. Since they probably know when you go to the bathroom, they'll be able to use AI with all this information to micro-target every single individual.

lcordier• 3 years ago

It prolly started as analytics for the engineers than corporate started seeing $$$ signs.

kkfx• 3 years ago

A very small very personal note: dear automakers what about making connected cars, BUT connected to their formal owners? Like hey a car with a webui built-in. So for instance instead of crapplications and crappy APIs [1] we can simply connect directly with dynDNS or a personal domain to our cars and owning them fully enough to decide how to upgrade their crapware, witch services gives to whom and so on?

I have three cars, only one a modern connected BEV, a modest MG ZS long range 2022. Just for instance with it's app sometimes I connect to someone else car in another country, localizing it. Apparently unlocking and remote command heating/A/c does not work sometimes, asking for a pin, sometimes does work not asking for nothing.

The problem is not the ex-husband, the problem is the crappy crapware you put on your vehicles to control them as you wish without much formal owners but in reality just users controls...

That's the real ABUSE.

[1] https://samcurry.net/web-hackers-vs-the-auto-industry/ also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34230093

Tracking and technology in cars is being weaponized by abusive partners

Related Stories