Toyota, Progressive Insurance, and a data analytics firm are now being accused of collecting detailed personal driving information without proper consent
I like this one. I hate other drivers on the road. This is an area where if they’re getting like speeds and how fast people were driving through neighborhoods or taking turns, fuck it. Oligarchs already steal all my data at least this instance can improve my commute
Yeah, I’m fucking done with cars. Can’t afford em anyway.
I’ve wondered a bit about taking the head unit from my jeep and playing with the data it receives, like telling it I’m going 3MPH all night long, or telling it I’m going 600MPH. Ultimately though I’m just going to get rid of it and get something older.
I want it shut off. I like the safety sensors but those can be passive and not telemetric.
I want people who look in my cars computers to search for info to find NOTHING.
If you just want it off that can be done too, but it depends on the vehicle as to where the modem is. For my Jeep its behind the head unit and seems to be a major pain to get to, but really its just a couple pieces of trim and a headunit in the way.
The only reason I haven’t is because I want to just get rid of it and get something more basic.
Kit cars. Just have a car with basic sensors for safety and all that jazz and no computers or telemetry whatsoever. There is no law requiring them.
Black boxes on cars only record the last 5 seconds to account for what happened in a crash. I can live with that.
I can use a DAP or hand radio for entertainment. No need for the computerized system. I never used those anyway. For GPS I would either do paper maps or use a passive GPS that does not transmit.
Anyone know any good reference projects for building a ras pi based car stereo replacement?
You could, but you’re better off just making an insert for a tablet. It has music, GPS, cell service optional, easily replacable.
When do companies ask for consent? Look at Google and incognito mode. Look at 23&me, I can go on. And nobody sees anything done about it. We are numbers. Not people. That’s our world
Little look at Julian Assange. Look at North Korea. Look at porn. Look at open source encryption. Look at the tor network. Look at mesh wifi. Look at private dns. Look at ungoogled chromium or librewolf. Look at webgl. Look at a little porn again. Look at the stars for a while. Look at signal. Smoke a cigarette and finally look at yourself
My new car had a whole Wikipedia worth of terms and conditions in the screen that had to accept before turning on for the first time.
There was no alternative other than “accept” or “leave the car at the dealership and pay the most expensive parking in the world forever”.
The fact that they can sell you a car without having to give you all of the terms and conditions is kinda nuts. Imagine if you went to buy a house and they just went “Nuh uh, pay first, we give you all the HOA rules and city ordinance laws you have to follow afterwards. What is in them? It’s a mYsTeRy!”.
That’s unchecked capitalism
Funny that 23andMe is the Google founders wife’s company.
We’re sorry!
And that toothpaste is not getting put back in the tube.
Now That is a powerful cat.
They ask for consent when they operate in the European Union
They ask for consent in the terms and conditions, you know, that long annoying text that no one really reads when signing up for stuff.
That is where they put the consent.
Is it consent if it is forced?
No one is forcing you to use their services
If you need a service and every competing service has the same practice, then yes they are.
Oh, I agree, I just meant it as that is how they see it
You must not be from earth friend.
If you keep reading the thread, you’ll see that I made the post to show the thought process of companies doing this.
Seen the third party message on the Wirecutter comments section?
“If you comment on these socks we’re recommending YOUR DATA WILL BE SOLD!!!”
Incredible and actually good guy vendor (Disqus) in a way for not hiding it unless it was their lawyers’ doing :)
The thing about 23&Me is that they’re collecting data not just on the people who signed up for the service - the ones who actually skipped and accepted the T&Cs - but their family members as well.
So are Facebook and WhatsApp. If you’ve never used either of them they definitely know who you know and have a data entry with connections ready for you to claim if you do sign up to them.
It’s not real consent if you’re forced to agree to use the product or if the terms allow the company to alter the terms.
And it’s so ubiquitous that the only way to avoid them altogether is to become Amish.
Good luck never agreeing to binding arbitration. And even if you do get out of it, good luck ever holding them accountable in a class action. You might be able to file a class action, but no one can join you.
Further, like, as a third party I can’t really consent. Say I’m out on a walk and I pass a Tesla, or that Tesla drives by me. It has a bunch of cameras, it’s recording a bunch of shit. I as a passerby have no ability to consent or decline being recorded just going about my business.
I fucking hate that. Every time I see a modern car I’m grossed out because I feel like I’m being watched.
My car is 26 years old, truck is 30… No internet connectivity there, and yet my rates going up steadily every year with nothing on my driving record. 🙄
Yup. Older cars costing more to insure is yet another poor tax.
They charge you extra since they can’t sell your data.
This is calculated by the odds of your car breaking(higher as the car ages/parts become more expensive), the chances you are going to get into an accident (go higher as you age up after 30 something), and the chances another driver will crash into you without your fault(this saw a large increase after COVID, people just started driving worse for some reason I don’t know). All of this means that you will pay more for insurance and it 100% isn’t your fault.
We’re all collectively paying global insurance for the devastating climate change>> bushfire, flooding, hurricanes, extreme weather.
How would the Toyota CEO not know about this? Weird. /s
- Step 1: Place peanut butter on spyware box and wireless antenna cables
- Step 2: Hold varmint near cables and allow it to chew through them
- Step 3: Maintain your plausible deniability.
Why would I need plausible deniability? Despite what CEO’s think, its my car. I can rip out and destroy any part of it I want.
Counterpoint: maybe people who drive like dangerous cunts need some kind of enforcement?
Dont make excuses for corporations spying on you.
Nope. Insurance companies raising rates aren’t going to change anyone’s driving habits.
Yup, insurance companies raising rates is going to change plenty of people’s driving habits
Not from a car that can’t tell you merged onto the freeway and wants you to go 40 in a 65
That’s what traffic cops are supposed to be doing.
I’ve always been a fan of the idea that you don’t need armed police to do traffic enforcement, you could get this done with another group of unarmed local officials of some sort with cameras, like meter maids but mobile. Headlights too bright, muffler too loud or missing, speeding, etc could be gathered and enforced much more rapidly. All the fines etc. are mailed out, no dangerous human-human or dangerous roadside interactions required. Would increase the amount and effectiveness as well. It would also free up police to do what they are (in theory, in an ideal world) supposed to be doing which is solving crimes.
Yeah, that could work. Just keep corporations out of it. They’ve proven they can’t be responsible for traffic enforcement (or anything else where the goal is making things better for people) because their main concern will always be profit. They may sound reasonable at first but once they get their foot in the door they will be constantly tightening the screws. Just look at what’s happened with red light cameras.
Yes, you must keep it as government officials, members of the public etc. and not let it turn into a revenue generator even then. The focus should be on enforcement with the end goal of safer public spaces.
They will hate you because you’re right
😆 they haven’t in years. I think when maps let us report police locations they all stopped policing traffic
Im Kinda with you on this. Or no, Im not, but this is one of those where i get conflicted and cant help but feel a little bit satisfied about asholes being punished. For me it’s the same as when I hear about someone assulting a rapist. Im morally against the “taking the law into your own hands” but still…
So… we all have to accept that privacy/accountability trade-off? I know I didn’t agree to it.
Why does “some kind of enforcement” need to involve violating the privacy of everyone, including people who don’t drive like dangerous cunts? Do you really think there’s no other way to enforce traffic laws?
The only way to truly avoid that outcome is with enforceable rules around consent, transparency, and control, letting drivers see exactly what’s being collected, who it’s going to, and giving them a real way to say no. That, or skip the connected car entirely and drive something that isn’t quietly reporting back every time you hit the brakes.
Yeah none of that’s gonna happen anytime soon. When my 16 year old car bites the dust my next car will be another one from that same era. I’m not letting big brother know everything about me and jack up my insurance rates for the privilege of being spied on.
I totally get that sentiment, but there have been significant safety improvements in the last 20 years. Your chances of escaping serious injury in an accident are a lot better with a 2025 car than a 2005.
I have a 2024 and I don’t like that it’s probably sharing data, but I specifically didn’t get an older used car because they’re much less safe. I pay $90 for full coverage for two drivers in Denver without the telematics app discount.
Are you threatening higher insurance rates for someone who wants to drive an older car, in the name of safety?
Sounds like insurance companies punish drivers who can’t afford/don’t want new cars with higher rates, while using safety as a scapegoat.
Being poor is very expensive.
You completely missed the point of my comment.
The person I replied to was worried that data shared by newer cars would be used to raise their insurance rate, so I mentioned insurance to say it didn’t happen to me and my rate is actually pretty low for my area.
Hey, you do you. If you value your privacy over your physical safety then drive an old beater death trap.
Older cars would be perfectly safe if newer cars weren’t gigantic land battleships.
Lol, I’ve seen this stupid take so many times here. You should educate yourself on car safety. There have been a lot of important safety innovations over the past 20 years and cars get safer every year. I’m significantly safer in my newer smaller-than-average car than I would be in the same model from 20 years ago.
Leave your mobile phone at home as it knows when you’re driving, speed, acceleration, routes, times. Then you have the CCTV on the roads tracking your every move with your licence plate and facial recognition.
And when you get home turn off the smart TV, smart fridge, smart dishwasher, doorbell cameras, Alexa’s, Google’s. These devices aren’t for our convenience primarily; they’re built to collect our valuable data about our living habits.
Digitally connected electricity, gas and water meters all monitor our usage thus working out our lifestyle patterns and habits. Even smart lightbulbs have the capacity to snoop on our private lives.
From the moment we wake up to turning off the light these connected devices quietly gather data about us innocuously… even when we sleep (phones monitoring breathing sounds).
You can get “smart” devices that do not sell your data, but they are less common and they can be hard to find when shopping. You may not get a choice about “smart” meters, but you may be able to obfuscate your electrical usage with batteries. However, if the batteries have an internet connection they’ll probably sell your data.
Amen. We all drive cars older than 2015, and I’ve gone against anything newer.
The other issue is all those Flock cameras all over our state and surrounding areas, is almost impossible to not be tracked. I didn’t consent to those being used by or municipal or city.
I’m sick of being data points on a spreadsheet!!
I’m so happy my city took down our flock cameras
How’d they do it? Contract ended or petition?
Neither. The city shut them down in direct response to it coming into the open that they shared data with federal border patrol, claiming a contract violation.
Time to make data sharing illegal. If it is technically needed, the industry needs to have a written contract with the user, which describes in detail which data is shared. It must be a separate contract from anything else, and one each for each industry partner.
it is technically needed, the industry needs to have a written contract with the user, which describes in detail which data is shared. It must be a separate contract from anything else, and one each for each industry partner.
That’s the Terms and Conditions that nobody reads.
The t&c are not a separate contract, though. Its a “take it or leave it” signing here gets you the car and the agreement to be spied upon.
I’m not talking about a “one click for everything”. I’m talking about a separate, written contract that can be cancelled at any time, without cause for any other obligation.
I read them all now with Chatgpt. Just fed it in and summarize
Notarized. The agreements need to be notarized.
And you have to be able to cancel it at any time.
Why
Because the seriousness of this contract should require proof that you agreed to it
A little click box is fine for something that doesn’t matter, but for lifetime real time surveillance, that’s important enough that you should have a serious contract with proof that you actually signed it
I feel like this was something that needed to be stopped decades ago but now it’s just not possible to do this. You can’t wait until it’s this big then start thinking how to change it
The other option is to look at the possible outcomes and in this case the direction we are on is unacceptable.
Better to start now because it gets costlier by the minute to delay.
That which is unsustainable tends not to be sustained.
Hahaha welcome to the eu
“T&Cs update : please agree to 80 pages of impenetrable legal jargon before you can continue to use your vehicle”
That’s why I say it must be a written, separate contract. And not signing it must be without consequences regarding other contractual obligations.
In the owner’s manual, it says you consent to data collection by driving the car and if you don’t consent, you should return the car to the nearest dealer.
I’ll bet if you tried it the dealer would refuse to take it back.
I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that court case.
Fuck them and the horse they rode on. Stuff like that needs to be made illegal.
Honestly if a car has any form of internet connectivity built in, it should raise so many red flags before you even sit down to talk financing.
So, OnStar, for decades now, has had cellular activity whether you were paying for it or not. They just used to be careful about not selling data. But even if the user didn’t pay and the manufacturer didn’t sell, those models are trackable by ISP.
Sounds logical.
which part sounds logical?
That Onstar probably has decades of telemetry they’ve sold.
They definitely have. You have to jump through hoops to request and delete your data from some data broker. I had to do this, it was a massive report with no context and arbitrary statements like “hard braking” and “excessive acceleration”. They sell the data to brokers who sell out to insurance companies to raise your rates based on these arbitrary reports.
It’s all so disgusting.
Good luck finding a modern car that doesn’t, I just yank out the power to the modem
My '24 Civic has no connectivity but bluetooth. I don’t know about the 25s.
I wouldn’t mind doing this on my vehicle. Elaborate?
Searching for your car model + ‘disable modem’, ‘remove cellular’, ‘physically remove 5g’, etc. Will often come up with guides for specific vehicles.
In my car, it’s just a separate board you can just unplug.
There might be a dedicated fuse, also. If so, that would be the easiest solution
my rates do seem high. I had a wreck a few years back but it was a dented door and fixed just fine. I work from home so I dont drive all that much, and the car is cheap. But it does have telemetry. I wonder if I should just bridge a resistor across the onstar antenna terminals
Casually reading, you could put a 50ohm or larger resistor there.
You will have a better result removing/disabling the module completely. There are several searchable tutorials based on the vehicle module.
Yes but if it ever goes into the shop a software update can teach it to misbehave when things are disconnected. An artificially weak signal, on the other hand, would fall under a practical failure mode they would have accommodated for in firmware.
Ah, I don’t think about dealerships unless I’m looking for used cars. I repair everything I own the best I can and move on when I can’t. It’s stressful, but I prefer it to a payment.
These behaviors will only get worse, unless we change the system. We just need to help each other understand that, and then execute it!
Next: Insurance premiums rise if you cannot be tracked and verified to be a safe driver.
In a sense that already exists, as I’m pretty sure there are extra plan benefits if you opt-in to more surveillance.
My Farmer’s agent offered a discount, I forgot how much, maybe 15% to use their app and location services. It was a few years back, I told them to get stuffed.
And this is why I would never own a vehicle made after 2006.
