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Can someone explain exactly how a car is a privacy nightmare? Like what data does it collect and how does it transmit it? Does it have GPS? Is it recording audio somehow? Is it transmitting over cellular data? Verizon, T-mobile? Who's paying that data bill, Toyota?
I just don't get it.
My RAV4 has Android Auto, but I don't have a Toyota app on my phone or anything so how would toyota get stuff from my phone?
Here's a useful link from Mozilla that details some of the carmakers doing some shady stuff with their models. In a nutshell, these cars have a GPS transceiver, microphones, and cameras to monitor your location, hear your conversations, and even see who's in the cabin with you. Usually this info can be sold to third parties like insurance companies, cities, advertisers, and more. They can even give the data to law enforcement with few limitations if any. There could be a bunch of other ways this data could be exploited.
Usually these cars have some basic cellular modern to transmit the data but I wouldn't know how much the carmakers pay for the service.
I wonder if anyone has tried "jailbreaking" their EV's and running custom OS's on it to get rid of the spyware.
Would most likely void the warranty, but still.
No such animal exists. They’re all rolling data collection machines.
I drive a bolt. To somewhat minimize the GM evil, I don’t have the GM app installed and I didn’t give the Bluetooth connection access to anything but Apple CarPlay. Of course if you’re a real privacy purist, you don’t have a smartphone and don’t use Bluetooth anyway.
If you want a car with privacy, you’ll have to buy an old car without a computer.
Cars have been required to have computers since 1996.
Computer - yes, in the technical term. Traditional car ECUs don't gather data, GPS, driving habits, etc. and phone home though. Also, as another user said, the regulations starting in 96 were for OBD2 ports. Cars already had computers before then.
In addition, the issue is arguably less the collection of data, and more the ability for the car to actually send that data somewhere.
Yep. You want the car to collect telementry data for help in diagnosing issues as needed. That's not at all the issue, and nobody would be mad if the companies treated the data with respect.
Unfortunately that's not going to happen unless legislation forces it to.
E: sp
Don't pretend you don't understand the distinction between what was ostensibly mandated in '96 and what we currently have