If You’ve Got a New Car, It’s a Data Privacy Nightmare
gizmodo.com
Bad news: your car is a spy. Every major car brand failed a recent privacy and security test from Mozilla. You’re probably driving around in a "privacy nightmare" that may collect information as sensitive as your race, health status, and sexual activity.

Can I please just get a car, instead of a rolling computer / infotainment / privacy nightmare?

  • onlooker@lemmy.ml
    24·
    10 个月前

    Wow, this is wildly unacceptable. Why in the hell would a car company need the user’s immigration status? Or genetic information? Or fucking sexual activity?! I hope somebody sues these asshole companies.

  • Ocelot@lemmies.worldEnglish
    192·
    10 个月前

    Im really curious as to how a nissan gathers details about sexual activity. I mean teslas have interior cameras that use image recognition to confirm that your eyes are on the road for safety, The data verifiably never leaves the car and is never saved but “Collecting data on facial expressions” seems like kind of a weird and dishonest spin on that.

    “Volkswagen’s cars reportedly know if you’re fastening your seatbelt” Is that just the occupancy sensor and seat belt sensor letting you know you forgot to fasten your seatbelt? or that one of your passengers is unbuckled? I wouldn’t consider that an invasion of privacy.

    Collecting the data is not whats important when theres safety implications. Its what’s done with the data thats important and potentially privacy invading. Nissan does have the term about selling your data in writing, thats probably more of a legal blanket statement to cover them in the future for some super weird edge case.

    Generally speaking privacy invasions are more aligned with free services

      • Ocelot@lemmies.worldEnglish
        21·
        10 个月前

        Sorry I don’t see any indication that this was from the interior camera, only the exterior cameras recording public spaces (dashcam)

      • notfromhere@lemmy.one
        11·
        10 个月前

        From the article you linked:

        In its Customer Privacy Notice, Tesla explains that if a customer agrees to share data, “your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis. This analysis helps Tesla improve its products, features, and diagnose problems quicker.” It also states that the data may include “short video clips or images,” but isn’t linked to a customer’s account or vehicle identification number, “and does not identify you personally.”

        So (1) it is opt-in specifically, and (2) that article is taking about the external cameras.

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
      11·
      10 个月前

      The data verifiably never leaves the car and is never saved but

      Sorry but how… how do you verify this?
      Is all of the Tesla car software suite open source? Are the schematics of the car, at least about all the cabling and technical components publicly available? Or was it just the Tesla PR department saying that they of course don’t do that because they value your privacy so, so much?

      Tesla cares are big, remote controllable black boxes, that can receive software updates at any moment without you even knowing.

    • ErwinLottemann@feddit.de
      51·
      10 个月前

      about the tesla interior camera. no it does not. at least not in a very useful way. it tries to maybe detect that you probably are not distracted. one way to make it give up is wearing sunglasses.

      • Ocelot@lemmies.worldEnglish
        21·
        10 个月前

        I wear sunglasses to drive all the time. If I look down at the touchscreen to use the nav it beeps at me and tells me to keep my eyes on the road. It will even detect if you have a phone in your hand. Where do you see that it doesn’t monitor in any useful way? Would you prefer that people not be reminded of distracted driving?

  • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
    10·
    10 个月前

    As an environmentalist this really bothers me. I want a new electric car which is better for the planet. I no longer think I can. I would probably have to pick up an older model. What a joke. I’m too angry about the way the world is progressing, our privacy is eroded faster that we can take steps to mitigate.

    • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.de
      61·
      10 个月前

      The best alternative would probably be, if feasible at all, a bike coupled with public transport. For our privacy as well as for the environment.

      • chayleaf@lemmy.ml
        1·
        10 个月前

        tbf public transport can be very bad for privacy, depending on the politics of your country… granted, with facial and other recognition nowhere is safe

    • notfromhere@lemmy.one
      21·
      10 个月前

      I wish Tesla kept selling the “$35k Model 3” that was stripped down and had no cameras or autopilot. Essentially just an electric vehicle with no bells and whistles.

    • Ronno@kbin.social
      5·
      10 个月前

      No, the issue is not cars, the issue is governments allowing, or actively pushing these companies to mass surveillance on a wide scale. This goes beyond the car. Children born today will never experience Privacy.

  • QuazarOmega@lemy.lol
    8·
    10 个月前

    I’m still wondering how they’d be able to collect race, genetic, sexual, etc. information, some of those things don’t seem at all possible, but they’re somehow listed anyway, which is doubly scary

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
      5·
      10 个月前

      No actual idea, but I think there’s a considerable amount of cars that are filled with cams and mics “for your convenience”.
      Including the (afaik) mandatory SOS button, that has a mic and a cellular connection.

      • Ronno@kbin.social
        3·
        10 个月前

        This indeed, it is quite easy to scan video feeds of the interior camera and determine these characteristics, as well as link them to social media scraping to find your preferences. Scary AF

      • QuazarOmega@lemy.lol
        1·
        10 个月前

        Yeah, that’s reasonable to explain many things for well equipped cars, but the genetic information??

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
          2·
          10 个月前

          Yeah, that’s a good question. Maybe the steering wheel absorbs and tests the driver’s sweat? Lol this sounds overboard, and almost certainly it is, but I can’t think of anything that would warrant that part

          • QuazarOmega@lemy.lol
            1·
            10 个月前

            Haha, yep, it would also be unreasonably expensive, but who knows?
            Maybe they get that by correlating your profile with data of some entity that does have it, because it was collected and shared by a health company you might used services from. No amount of tinfoil hats will protect us