Court rules automakers can record and intercept owner text messages
therecord.mediaA 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.
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Don’t want to sound like a corporate shill, but this sounds necessary for handsfree functions. To read an incoming text read aloud, there would have to be a copy stored. If one was paranoid, they could just avoid pairing their phone.
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Brb, gonna wiretap the judge’s house. It’s not a crime as long as I don’t act on the information I hear so there is no injury.
First step of buying a car, find all antennas and replace them with dummy loads
I guess someone should’ve presented the following situations to the court: some CEO of a small-medium company driving his Toyota sends a very important message regarding work. Toyota also gets to read it and is immediately aware of how that’ll affect stock price. Time to gamble on the market, baby!
Situation 2: some researcher driving his Honda sends several files regarding a secret new product to his boss. Honda also gets to access the files and the content of the message. “Oh look, Honda released my product before me!”
Situation 3: After using the snooped information for self profit, the automaker sells it to 3rd parties for further profit.
I got my ballot this Monday and half of the spots to be voted on had only one candidate… maybe remove that shit from the ballot and add things like…“would you like Toyota to know where you are when you send emails about your period?” That would be useful.
You’d think, but that’s essentially the California proposition system, and it has significant downsides.
Care to elaborate on the significant downsides?
I’m in Washington State so I guess it is everywhere.
Double you fucking tee eff? Holybonkerslaw Batman! Now what? Can Motorola take pictures of me while I take a shower watching porn?..err, sending emails?
For what it’s worth my 2015 Toyota will allow me to connect over Bluetooth but in android I wouldn’t give it permissions to my text message, just audio. It works fine except for the fact that every damn time I turn the car on it asks again for text message access and I have to click no on the infotainment screen.
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Sick fucks.
Wild that your own text messages could be stored locally on your car but you have no access to the information
Oh nice, so people are spending $30,000 min on any new car AND it will record and pass on everything you do in it? Oh and depending on the car manufacturer you may have to pay a subscription for remote entry and heated seats. Its almost as if you are paying for something that you don’t control, don’t own and now works directly to steal information from you. Cool. Cool.
Fucking why? WHY IS IT OKAY TO SPY AND SNOOP?
Because a billion people clicked “I Accept” over the past 20 years.
What they really clicked is “this is bullshit and I don’t have time to read all of this, just to use something I paid for”. If companies were required by law to distill their policies into plain English and short summaries then a lot fewer people would have clicked accept. But those ToS started out as nothing more than overly long liability waivers, and over the years the corporations started sneaking more and more exploitative language into them.
$$$$$$$$
Wouldn’t it be cool if legislatures made decisions based on the constitution and ethics and weren’t completely driven by corporate profits?
By design.
I have issue if they:
Collect unnecessary data if just used to read out messages, relay calls, or navigate
Store it in their cloud service (i.e. not local on the car)
Share it or sell it with other third parties
Cannot delete the data collected
Clearly states in article owners can’t delete data collected
They will say they won’t but there’s nothing stopping them. Isn’t that the actual problem?
Yes, the problem is that there are no laws to stop them and now it was just officially made legal.
I’m never ever ever going to buy a electric car as long this shit keeps hitting fp. My diesel does 1.18 liters (like amazing on murica meter) and I can drive 900 kns with 1 full tank and a 3 minute reload. I don’t know what they gave you to even consider the step to being electric, but a heavy pass from me.
You know this is about all cars right? Your diesel will also do this if new enough.
That’s the neat part: my diesel car (I’m not the guy you replied to; I just also own one) is old.
In fact, old diesels are actually better because the common-rail fuel pump and “clean diesel” bullshit on the newer ones makes them incompatible with >10% biodiesel. My car can actually be carbon-neutral (simply by putting B100 in it) because it’s old!
Oh, if it is old enough you should run it on old cooking oil. Knew someone that had an old diesel rabbit who was all into alternative fuels and ran it on leftover oil from a fryer, smelled like french fries.
B100 smells like food, too (the stuff I typically buy is a byproduct of chicken rendering plants, so it smells like fried chicken).
WVO vs. biodiesel is kind of a “six of one, half a dozen of the other” kind of thing: either you modify the car to run the unmodified biofuel, or you modify the biofuel to run in an unmodified car. I prefer the latter since it’s simpler and I can just buy it.
It sounds like someone needs to bring a similar suit in the EU and point to the GDPR. Where is the agreement to specific processing, the chance to opt out of the data collection, etc.
I think I’ll continue sticking to “dumb” cars… at least as much as they’re available.
The “smart” fad can go fuck a duck.
Or just don’t connect your phone to it. That’s what I do. I’ve never touched the “smart” screen in my car except to adjust the air conditioner.
Yes and you paid for that “smart” screen, and anyway does this stop the car from sending anything? No?
You sure showed them, by not using the stuff you paid them for. Yeap.
I paid for a car that I could drive halfway across the country in and be comfortable,not spend a fortune on fuel, and not worry too much about it stranding me on the side of the road. The smart screen just happened to come with it. So it seems to have worked out fine for me.
Are you naturally an asshole or are you making a special effort here?
Yes, clearly I am being an asshole for not defending the automakers.
Ugh, I also have a special hatred for touch screen anything in cars.
Give me fucking knobs and buttons. I don’t want to have to stop looking at the road while I drive a 1000kg death machine because I can’t adjust the air con without looking.