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Car is a smartphone on wheels. Here's who's listening

Car is a smartphone on wheels. Here's who's listening

longhaul

Comments (79)

  • randomhacker123
    They only looked at the domains the car talks to over wifi, not to the content. For a Tesla Model 3 they also looked at the mobile traffic, because it was easy doable.They played around with the infotainment of the car for 30 minutes, when it has for example a YouTube app, they opened it. When the car talked to YouTube over Wifi they counted it as one ATA (Advertising, Tracking, and Analytics).When you have less apps in the car, or all data is tunneled trough the car manufacturer it results in less ATA and therefore a better score.The paper says this:> 2. Stationary Active: The vehicle was parked and powered on for 30 minutes while we interacted with as many sensors and features as possible. This included opening and closing doors and the trunk, pressing dashboard and seat controls, activating stalks (lights, wipers), and exploring all infotainment menus and apps. https://automatictransmission.khoury.northeastern.edu/paper....Their repository has the classification of vendors here: https://github.com/nicolegerzon813/Automatic-Transmission-An...It would be nice to have know which domains were accessed by which car. Even better would be to know which action in the car correlated with which connection.
  • zenapollo
    The world IS getting mass surveillance. The havens for privacy are shrinking. We are becoming the ants in the ant farm.One thing i don’t understand is how pro-surveillance advocates don’t understand that the moment they are not behind the terminal, they are the target.
  • ChrisArchitect
  • atmavatar
    The unfortunate reality is we can expect more and more of our goods to spy on us over time, as there are both political and economic motivations to track and collect as much data as possible on everyone.The best thing you can do is avoid products with trackers while they haven't taken over their entire market, learn to disable GPS, wireless, and cellular antennae once they do, and pray manufacturers take a while to insert dead-man switches as well.
  • axegon_
    This is part of the reason why I don't want a new car: I don't want to be involved in this directly. A guy from work got a brand new Hyundai(I think), and the first thing that popped on the navigation was "Create an account with Hyundai now". Nah. Nah. Forget it. I have 3 issues:1. I should not have to authenticate or have connectivity to a manufacturer unless I want to once I've paid for a physical good(cars being physical goods).2. I don't want my personal data to be sold off to anyone - I've been in the tech industry for long enough to know that "I don't want my data to be shared with third parties" is worth as much as the power used to light up the pixels on the screen.3. I don't trust anyone to have done everything carefully and by the books to prevent any potential leaks.
  • rcpt
    If this tech was being used for traffic enforcement then I'm all for it. Unfortunately it seems like people will still be able to browse their phone behind the wheel and run over kids on bikes despite the surveillance
  • hoppyhoppy2
  • recursivedoubts
    It has been demonstrated repeatedly that modern cars can be remotely hijacked and controlled as well. We really do live in a dystopia.
  • prometheus1992
    is anyone aware of a public db where you can check how much info a car shares with the manufacturer,insurance etc based on make, model, year?
  • exabrial
    It doesn't need to be or should be though.
  • anon
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  • mycall
    My car still uses 3G, so not much listening to it anymore.. although oddly enough, when I drive into the dealership, they automatically download vehicle statuses.
  • longhaul
    There are no specific opt outs. Either you allow everything or navigation doesn’t work etc.
  • indymike
    I'd like to have a radio kill switch be required on all devices. The reason is that eventually, things that emit RF energy could be targeted by drones. That scares me.
  • jruohonen
    Nice work but I wonder whether the methodology is sufficient (and, yes, I skimmed through the paper's Section 3.2).
  • hecturchi
    I obtained my data via GDPR request from Audi. Despite having disabled telemetry and location services, remote access and so on on certain date, the car kept sending every destination address I wrote on the navigator to the motherbase. Other location tracking services did stop (i.e. no live positioning).I'm still clarifying the purpose of this before making a complaint to the data authority.
  • mattanimation
    This is why I buy cars older than 2015.
  • AndrewKemendo
    I’ve been constantly telling everyone I know about this since the patriot act was signed and basically 100% of people don’t care in my experienceThey just want to be able to connect their phone and have their music/video available and think that because they are “not doing anything wrong” they don’t “have anything to fear”I’m glad this site exists so I can just send it to people directly
  • Noaidi
    Currently enjoying, and keeping alive, my 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan...
  • moffkalast
    Well, just the fact that you don't pay for the monthly cellular subscription these cars use should tell you all you need to know about who's the product in this situation.
  • codegeek
    I recently sold my Lincoln Navigator and bought a used 2005 Honda Odyssey (single owner before me, 115K miles and well taken care of). Good luck trying to spy on me. It doesnt even have bluetooth let alone all the other smarttech crap. Good old CD player and Radio.
  • anon
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