this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023

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How Your New Car Tracks You (12ft.io)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Rule number one of buying a new car: get the dealer to disconnect the modem.

Cars should be entirely open source by government regulation. All software should be public and the manufacturer should be required to host and maintain a public toolchain that can reproduce the software and any revisions made. All of this should also get mirrored by the library of Congress and made publicly available as a second source indefinitely. This is about ownership. Digital rights are never okay to reserve. If I do not own everything I am only renting from the real owner. Proprietary goods are theft of ownership. It really is that simple.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Agreed. Mercedes and others of EV vehicles now "rent" you horsepower. For a extra fee your car's horsepower won't be throttled or limited. Ahhh technology....we've came so far. 🐈‍⬛

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm glad that requesting dealerships disconnect modems is a thing, I was thinking I may have to McGuyver a solution like de-solder the antenna myself! I'm not in the marker for a new car yet but I may be soon, who knows.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ironically, you cannot find out if your car is affected unless you’re willing to share your VIN with the helpful folks at privacy4cars.com

So, since I don’t own a model specifically listed in the story and I value my privacy …

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you do want to check your car more anonymously, make up numbers for the last 6 digits. The first 11 digits contain all the make/model/options info, the last 6 digits are unique to each vehicle.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just gave it a test run with a nonsense vin, to see if they wanted more info. they don't. Your vin is not private information - its connection to you is (sort of, the dmv's records are actually public). So if you cared to use this tool, just use a vpn and you're all set.

It's probably wise to assume everyone on the internet is out to get you. But to provide some kinds of tools online, you have to ask for information.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

👏 Do 👏 not 👏 buy 👏 smart 👏 stuff 👏

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

FTFY: 👏 Do 👏 not 👏 buy 👏 smart 👏 stuff 👏connected 👏to 👏the 👏 internet 👏
Nothing wrong with wanting smart stuff, as long as it doesn't send your data. For example, I run all my home automation hardware on a local network that cannot speak to the web, yet I can control everything I want just as the next guy with his fancy Alexa, Google or whatever, but my house doesn't leak as much data.

For cars this is still very difficult to do. The only way we can stop sharing as much data would be if we had legislation that would ban this type of information sharing/data mining. In Europe we tried barking, but we didn't bite. The GDPR is a joke, forcing people to consent to cookies, net result is nothing. They should have banned data mining, fingerprinting and tracking al together, but the tech lobby is way too powerful for that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, smart stuff is only worth buying if you know what you're doing. I wouldn't bother with it otherwise.

I don't like at all the direction we're taking with cars, they're getting too invasive. They're also extremely inefficient compared to a proper public transport infrastructure

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Agree with cars becoming more invasive, but disagree that they are less efficient. The only places where public transport shines is in cities. Outside of cities, it is very difficult to make public transport efficient enough to make it worthwhile. I live in The Netherlands, which is the size of a post stamp, and even here, when you don't live in the city your commute is 3 to 4 times longer by public transport than a car.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Voting with your wallet doesn't work here. People will choose the most convenient option and the other options will eventually start to disappear. Like safety, this needs to be regulated because security and privacy is by definition inconvenient.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Sad but true. For now I encourage everyone to buy second-hand: less waste, less money to greedy corps and more to both the person we buy from and ourselves

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It really depends, I would say do not buy InternetOfThings stuff. As long as it's only accessible locally you should be good. And then you can expose to yourself on the Internet via VPN or something with https://www.home-assistant.io/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, don't buy smart suff you have no control on would've been a better way to phrase it. Ty for explaining it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's why I'll probably drive older cars the rest of my life.

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