I am sure this article has been shared before, however I wanted to have a look at this topic.
The articles short summary is this:
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the worst category of products that we have ever reviewed
I am currently driving a 2014 Ford Fiesta which just has a radio with a CD player and Bluetooth. I do not need more than that in a car.
The reason I am looking at all is that that the Fiesta does not belong to me and the friend owning it will be moving out in a bit, so I kinda need another one.
There seems to be one brand that is not as bad as the other ones (but still bad): Renault; mozilla’s review…
Maybe I will have a look at their cars.
What do you guys think? Stick to older used cars and not use an EV or look at which of the manufacturers have the least bad privacy policy?
The article is from 2023, it is likely several orders of magnitude worse now.
Imo, the sweet spot for reliability and unconnected tech is the mid 2000s to 2015ish. Good engine control, simple user interfaces with buttons, nice creature comforts, good fuel efficiency, and still good safety (generally)
I have a 2019 wrx that while I like it, I know the subaru telemetry is both significant and easy to access, there has been a number of articles about it published in the last year or two. There are opt out procedures through subaru but let’s not kid ourselves here do you really trust them to do it? How do you prove they have stopped?
That said, your phone shares all that data already, it being shared by another device is not really much different than coming from one source.
(Edit: since some of you missed what I was trying to convey here, I was trying to point out that the exercise of securing your car is half the battle, yes you SHOULD do that, any reduction in data sharing is a positive thing. You should also be realistic about how much that actually accomplishes when you are also carrying your cell phone with you in your car.)
What I really don’t like is the driver aids. My mom has a newer Mercedes suv and it is realllllllly intrusive. The auto brake function as awful, it auto does corrective steering. I am sure in an actual panic situation I would welcome it but I absolutely do not like it on normal situations. I also don’t trust it from a cyber security situation.
your phone doesn’t share data from your cars sensors with your insurance company.
You should double check that. There are lots of non-insurance apps that share data through data brokers where it gets back to insurers. You personally may not use them, but some people will/do.
I want to re-re-re-iterate that I am not advocating giving up on the idea of securing your car, I am just saying if you are going through the exercise of making sure your car is secure or offline that you also need to be realistic about what your phone shares even when locked down.
Fair enough, you do have a good point. Though I will argue stopping one is better than none.
I agree 100%.
That is imo neither here or there. It is about the car. “Another device is also bad so its irrelevant” is just not a good response.
I’m not arguing you shouldn’t try and be secure. If you are going to the effort to secure your car, you should also make sure your other devices are secure because these sources share much of the same data.
lol. No. No, it does not. Location data cannot be anonymized, so I dont share it.
You can throw your hands in the air and give up, but I will not.
If you think your wireless cell phone that constantly is in sync with cell phone radio towers around you does not allow your location to be known or calculated, I have some bad news for you.
Again, I am not saying I am giving up on anything. I mention that because the action of securing your car without being realistic about what your phone is doing while in your car or in your pocket is an half baked exercise.
You’re moving the goalposts. My carrier being able to infer my location is a far cry from every app broadcasting my location back to their CDP so they can sell it to advertisers. I have worked within the infrastructure involved here and I know very well how much information YOUR apps are sharing with their masters.
I’m not doing anything, you are inferring what I meant without asking… Again, all I am saying is that the car is one vector for tracking both via location and activity and you should not ignore one and think that you are not being tracked.
Fair enough. Have a good one.