This is good news, hopefully the FTC actually does something.
This sounds good and promising but it’s should be noted that they do not have to answer to the FTC according to this article, it has merely been recommended in a letter to the FTC by one senator that they should investigate some specific car companies. There doesn’t seem to be any new way in which they are more or less accountable to the FTC than they were or weren’t already and there’s no obligation on the strength of this letter to do any investigation nor any guarantee of a positive outcome if they did. A rare and nice little show of support from a member of the political class for privacy rights but nothing substantive or concrete.
Why only specific companies when Mozilla exposed literally every single manufacturer for massive privacy intrusions? Every car on the market got an F rating.
Hedging my bets in trying to make my statements correct. Phrasing as I did, my statements are true if it’s just a few companies under potential scrutiny or all car companies in the US so it’s the truest way to write with the facts I haven’t my disposal.
Do you mean Tesla?
If only it was just them and not every car manufacturer
I’m still sad about not doing the EV conversion of the 80s civic wagon back when I had a job that I made money in. Definitely wouldn’t be able to spy on me. New cars have so much stuff that is a mystery and for some reason they need a lot more fixing.
Great stuff, great initiative by Mozilla to being this to light!
The government may do something. It will just take them five years to do so.
Edit: In the meantime, buy yourself a bike or a golf cart or four wheeler or something. Though maybe not a four-wheeler or golf cart, since I don’t think you can drive those on regular roads, but you can ride a bike on regular roads, so maybe that. Or a motorcycle. That’s putting your money where your mouth is because a motorcycle is highly not likely to have spy equipment just because of lack of space.
Edit 2: Motorcycles do not burn fuel as cleanly so are more harmful to the environment though so trade-offs
Edit 3: open source cars I wonder if that’s a thing
Motorcycles do not burn fuel as cleanly so are more harmful to the environment though so trade-offs
That very much depends on the bike and if the owner is a douchebag that notifies it to be horrible.
Also, motorcycles can get around 50 miles per gallon. So that’s a win vs other ICE vehicles.
It’s not the gas mileage, that’s the problem. It’s the amount of CO2 and whatever it emits into the air is higher in particulate matter or whatever because there’s not a catalytic converter and such like there is in cars. at least from what I understand.
source?
There are low emission older cars too. Just saying. Not much tech BS.
This message was brought to you by honda fit gang
Motorcycles do not burn fuel as cleanly so are more harmful to the environment though so trade-offs
I’m assuming probably not on a “vehicle miles traveled” basis, though.
From a link someone provided above it seems legit.
the motorcycle used 28% less fuel than the comparable decade car and emitted 30% fewer carbon dioxide emissions, but it emitted 416% more hydrocarbons, 3,220% more oxides of nitrogen and 8,065% more carbon monoxide. The MythBusters’ conclusion: ‘At best, it’s a wash. Motorcycles are just as bad for the environment as cars,’ Savage said on the show. ‘At worst, they’re far worse.’
I recognize it’s not an official study, but seems to be more concrete than anecdotal evidence and changed my perspective some. The article also quotes a researcher at UC Riverside which makes more sense on what’s going on
‘We’ve been working to clean up passenger vehicles since the ‘70s,’ said Kent Johnson, who’s on the research faculty at UC Riverside and is director of its emissions lab, where the MythBusters’ numbers were analyzed. ‘We’ve been putting on catalytic converters and sensors to improve their ability to control emissions. We didn’t start doing that on motorcycles until the 2000s. It just shows you how far we’ve taken passenger vehicles and how difficult it is to do the same thing with motorcycles. First of all, there’s no room. And the incremental cost might double the price of a bike.’
(link)
Or just get an older vehicle.
This only works up to a point, and that’s a little concerning IMO. It’ll be true for longer than, say, cellphones, but no car lasts forever and at some point they could be prohibitively expensive.
open source cars I wonder if that’s a thing
I recently heard Mercedes have some focus on open source.
https://opensource.mercedes-benz.com/That’s cool. We definitely need open source car software But when I said that I was thinking more about hardware Because with open source hardware you couldn’t sneak connectivity chips Etc. in without people knowing about it
Something like this?
I’ve been following the progress on this for a while. Pretty awesome stuff.
Open source cars are kind of a thing, if you’re doing an engine swap, or building from scratch or something, that will usually require you to remove all of the privacy violating parts as a side effect. You could probably achieve a similar result with slightly less effort by removing the infotainment and replacing the ECU with an aftermarket one…
Most of the privacy violation parts are just in the infotainment though, so if you manage to replace that you’ll be pretty much there. Only issue is newer cars have all the hvac and things like reverse cameras controlled through it…
Another option would just be to make sure it has no network connections.
The last car I bought is a 2014 model year. The one before that is a 2016. I’m not buying anything made after 2020, even if I have to squeeze gasoline from the rocks with my bare hands. Not because I don’t like electric, but because I don’t want a spy appliance to drive around in, even if it has emoji headlights.
If I remember correctly, you’re probably already buying two new and need to go back further to like 2003 era or before.
Anything with OnStar capability can definitely track you, which I know started at least as far back as 2006 in Saabs
And even before that, you have to worry about the dealership plugging one of those devices into your car and pulling the data from it, even if it’s not uploaded remotely, it could still be grabbed. I think you may have to go back to about 2000 or before to see cars that don’t have that or it’s not common or does not collect very much data at all.
I think you are talking OBDII systems, and while they communicate with the ECU, that system wouldn’t need any GPS access. I don’t think it has a direct link with the cambus that would hold the more advanced data. (Which if memory serves, also doesn’t handle GPS.
There is a dedicated port in my car specifically for data logging, but it only records realtime, not past travel. My GPS unit does track “breadcrumbs” if not following a road, but you’d have to interface directly to that computer. since there is no Bluetooth, there is no contact data or advanced privacy weaknesses.
It wasn’t until recently that that basically all cars came with tracking built in. Some not that old models (like my 2018 Outback) can easily be bypassed with a quick harness install. But others are integrated into the ECU AMD cannot be removed.
What about the dealership uploads? Where? They plug that device into your car to see if there’s any errors or whatever and They can pull the data from it then and upload it I Want to say those go back as far as about 2000
My ‘14 has no connectivity beyond GPS and Bluetooth. My ‘16 had internet connectivity but only via 2G which doesn’t work anymore. I think I’m good.
What about the device the dealership can plug into your car and pull the diagnostic data from it and upload it while you take your car in for maintenance or whatever.
Only rich people and idiots take their car to a dealer for service.
That’s a fair point, but as cars have gotten more and more complicated, it takes more than just your normal shade tree mechanic to fix them in a lot of cases.
Sure, but there’s still a lot you can do with a cheap bluetooth OBD-II reader.
There are electro cycles.
Not cars per se, but with a few tools and a kit, you can convert a bicycle into a pretty great pedal-assist e-bike from the comfort of your own garage, cost-competitively with pre-built e-bikes, especially if you already own the bike you’re converting. Everyone has their own preference for the ideal bicycle, and there are plenty of DIY e-bike build guides on the web, so that might as well be open source.
maybe not a four-wheeler or golf cart, since I don’t think you can drive those on regular roads
Look up your local neighborhood / neighborhood electric vehicle / low-speed vehicle laws.
There are some places where they are allowed. There’s also a lot of places where the cops just don’t care enough to do anything about it, at least so long as you stay off arterial roads.
Though I cannot recommend a cargo ebike enough. Long-tail or bakfiets, though I personally prefer the long-tails as they ride more like bikes and the racks on the back tend to be extremely versatile for mounting weird stuff. The cheapest good ones are around $1,200 with near-0 cost of ownership. Incredibly useful vehicles.
Or you could drive a older car. You will need to learn how to do at least of of the maintenance yourself but being able to do simple maintenance like a oil change is a good skill and isn’t hard to learn.
Just bought a 2014 RAV4
Looking forward to zipping around my friend’s 2023 Bronco in 20 years when mine is still kicking at 400k miles and his transmission took a shit
one of the many reasons I don’t want to buy an EV (or any vehicle that touts an overly “smart” feature set)
My e-Berlingo is very basic. It can’t get remote update, it has to go to the dealship for them. I don’t think it has a data connection. Claims to has some, but you can turn it off and I bet it’s only for dealership download when it’s in for repairs. It can’t even keep time. It loses like a minute a week (which is the worse time keeping I’ve ever seen and I’m getting to be old now). So not doing NTP!
I count it’s basicness as a feature not a bug. I just use Android Auto (originally on a in-googled LineageOS and now GrapheneOS with Google sandboxes. I use Organic Maps).
I was thinking about buying a new car right when the Mozilla article about car privacy intrusion came out, and I decided to hang onto what I have forever.
I mean people love the classics for a reason, privacy is just an added bonus of having an awesome classic car.
Mine is definitely not a classic, but it’s also probably not spying on me.
Every new vehicle is like this. Why call out EVs specifically?
because they’re notorious for this kind of data collection. My car is older so maybe I’ve just been out of the market for so long and haven’t realized how bad this problem is. Sounds like I will be sticking to my older car for as long as I can lol
If you have any car with a modern suite of entertainment/nav/tech packages (which you personally do not I get that) you are a victim of this.
So how do newer cars send this info back? Do they have their own transmitters? Or are they uploading data via my wifi while parked in my garage? If so, can I just block the vehicle’s MAC on my network?
They have their own transmitters over cellular network.
If you have a car that uses cellular for in-car wifi or any other services (such as Onstar or competing services) that’s the way. And it’s possible (though I have no idea if it’s done) that they could include a cellular connection that isn’t available to you as the customer, but is used only for this purpose.
ah crap. I don’t use all the “Uconnect” garbage on my 9 year old Jeep, but it does appear though the dealer can collect (read: steal) info if I bring it in (I do maintenance myself but I have brought it in for recall fixes before). As far as “smart” stuff goes, I do connect my phone via bluetooth but I run GrapheneOS on my mobile so hopefully this mitigates some stuff. I’ve always thought it was just cars with data connections and cameras/self-driving modules that were the problem (at least in my understanding of networking vis-a-vis my background in network development, but then again cars run different firmware)
Because traditional cars were a thing before spying technology was available. EVs only became widely available when spying was already a common practice.
That is - I don’t think “buying an older car” is a longterm viable option, older ones would become harder to maintain as years go by. My main hope now is that people would find ways to physically rip the cellular connecticity devices out of cars and/or install privacy-focused OSs on them.
Are they bad at privacy or good at data scraping? It’s not like they intend to protect your privacy. That doesn’t make the line go up.
This is what I love Mozilla for. They can be credited for making this an issue that is getting some attention.
And yet they can’t seem to figure out that people want a peace of mind and will pay and use services that make them feel better.
Mozilla as a company has great brand familiarity all they need to do is to a big launch of a cool product.
Yeah they should’ve made what Proton has.
That would require them to not be US based.
Not possible in the USA
Just pass a damn privacy law already.
Imagine spending good money on a product and then some creep is able to track your every move, collect that data and then sell it some other creep.
That isn’t what you’re getting with any cell phone?
Not if you install a degoogled rom :)
Carrier data aggregation entered the chat.
Touché. But the less the better
You don’t have to have it out of a Faraday bag/turned on everywhere you go, only when using it directly.
Cell phones don’t cost tens of thousands of dollars and have easy ways to get around tracking if you’re really concerned. While I can avoid certain apps on my phone or install a different os, doing something similar for new cars is currently impossible apart from tearing it apart to find and unplug the modem.
You can’t stop location tracking on cellular devices. If it’s connected to a cell tower, you’re being tracked and profiled.
You can put your phone in a Faraday bag.
How am I going to do that to my car :(
In steps, and you kinda drive onto it
Not great for mobile operation, however 😬
Carrier is still slurping your dataz.
