“Privacy researchers at the Mozilla Foundation in September warned in a report that “modern cars are a privacy nightmare,” noting that 92 percent give car owners little to no control over the data they collect, and 84 percent reserve the right to sell or share your information. (Subaru tells WIRED that it “does not sell location data.”)”
Such a statement about not selling data can be very misleading, because the essential statement of saying “we do not share your location data” does not seem to have been made! Please, let us stop falling for the trick of companies saying that they do not sell our data as somehow equating to them respecting our privacy, because it is not an equivalence.
“While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the Internet
might be[are] spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines,” Mozilla’s report reads.“People are being tracked in ways that they have no idea are happening.”
“the minute you hook up your phone to Bluetooth, it automatically downloads all the information off your phone, which is sent back to the vehicle manufacturer.”
“if you want to protect the data on your phone, don’t connect it to the car.”
It’s so frustrating that if you buy a modern car you have to give up any semblance of privacy
I appreciate my 12 yr old car for this reason. Also, physical buttons I can hit without taking my eyes off the road
2012 prius-c, physical air-conditioning temp knob, physical buttons for everything. Added CarPlay receiver, and it’s the perfect vehicle. No electronic “syncing” to be done. Just works.
My 2004 was the newest car I’d had when I bought it in 2018. I don’t plan on ever buying anything newer.
Yeah I’ve always believed in tactile feedback for driving safety. Which is why I love my Jeep Wrangler without the fancy features. Analog dash, keyed ignition, manual locks, windows, seats. Dials, knobs, handshift. I only have the backup camera since it became required lol
My 2009 Outback Wagon died on me this past summer 😭😭😭
I like the one that sells your data about your sexual orientation, lol. It’s just so beyond the pale these days.
Yep. I’m stuck driving cars from the mid-2000s at the latest because it’s a deal-breaker for me.
I’d love to have an electric car, but because they’re all newer than that (except for some really rare compliance/fleet-only cars from the '90s with NiMH batteries, like the Ford Ranger and first-gen RAV4), I’d have to convert an ICE car to electric myself.
Commercial vehicles are still fine if you can tolerate it. Might be the best option in 15 years if nothing else. I have a '19 transit van and it has no way of phoning home, the only infotainment is the one I installed. I haven’t researched too deeply but I assume the transit connect line is similar and if it is I’m considering making one my next personal vehicle.
The commercial version of practically everything is better than the consumer version (or at least bullshit-free).
The reason being that a large company has negotiating power far beyond that of an individual consumer.
Remember when hyundais could be unlocked with just a usb cable and a phone? And hyundai wanted people to pay for the fix after breaking into hyundais became a trend on tiktok.
Good to know if I ever need to find out where my lesbian cousin is.
Nobody’s mentioned that the vulnerability was “immediately” fixed (within 24h according to a comment on a related post in the cybersecurity community). Like, the fact that this is even possible to begin with is obviously bullshit, and makes me wish I’d ripped the starlink box out of my car, but this is not the rampant and actively exploited thing that the headline would have me believe it is.
This just makes me glad I removed the starlink box from my outback the first month I got the car.
If anyone wants to do the same in my 2018 (most gen 5s should be the same) you remove the radio and the starlink box is inside it. Removing the box breaks your front speakers and microphone. A simple passive pigtail will fix the speakers, but the microphone needs power. I found a guy online who made the active adapter so it was purely plug and play.
To anyone who didn’t read the article and was confused like me, apparently starlink is Subaru’s remote car security feature.
Good point. I always forget about Teslas starlink when talking about Subarus
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