This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Imo, the only solution is every device with an antenna must be legally required to put a manual off switch.
Cell service, wifi, Bluetooth, any future service. If it broadcasts it needs a physical off switch.
If I sold my car to a government official and they found out I had hidden a camera, microphone and GPS in the car, I'd get a visit from the FBI. Yet companies do it with impunity. Does the CEO of Subaru have recordings of Bernie Sanders driving in his car?
The current generation of the ford mustang Mach-e has its mobile telemetry cellular antenna wired to an isolated fuse that you can just pull out to kill it. I was astonished to learn how straight forward the process is supposed to be.
I don't trust that they won't save the data and upload it during a servicing.
And each type of communication needs it's own switch. Don't let them pull some BS trying to make you enable all the hardcore tracking via a cell network just because you want to connect to Bluetooth.
There's always the carefully applied soldering iron.
If only I knew where.
Right to the temple of anyone who decided it was OK to do this kind of data collection.
I hope people realize that the solution isn’t really to just not buy one, especially since this is the way the industry is heading. The solution is regulations, strict regulations.
Stuff like this should be a slam dunk for congress but we all know which side they are on.
Agreed. It's really hard to understate how ineffective "voting with your wallet" can be. The fact is simply that nobody honestly cares. Even if you get 100 people to boycott a company, would 100 out of millions of consumers really make a difference? Of course not.
And of course, you always have cases like this where everybody does it. Same thing goes for TVs - if everyone spies on you, the only real solution is to not have a TV. Yes, I know there are exceptions here and there, but bad practices like these force buyers into making compromises that they shouldn't have to. Capitalism should be predicated on companies offering the best product to earn their income. It should not be about companies having the least bad product and trying every terrible thing that they can get away with.
(Of course, we all know that capitalism is a farce.)
I read somewhere that the thought that you can vote with your dollars makes you feel good and empowered to make choices, but is overshadowed by the fact that doing so means that whomever has more dollars has more votes.
Regarding Congress, I was really hoping that this big fear of TicTok would result in some sort of GDPR type laws which empower the individuals to take control of our personal data, which could also be used to prevent our personal data from being used against us by foreign countries.
We cannot stop collecting data about you because collecting the datum that you want to stop having your data collected failed.
I wonder if the situation in Europe is different, where such bullshit is illegal.
Are any of you even able to afford new cars? Who the hell's buying this shit? I probably won't have a new car ever.
Also mind that soon these new cars will be used cars with the same bullshit.
Buying a new car never really made sense to me even when you could afford it. 2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper. Why pay more if you can pay less?
Total new vehicle sales has remained roughly static for a little less than two decades. So yes, people can afford new cars.
For most, they can afford to finance them, but the rates aren’t looking too good lately
https://www.statista.com/statistics/290673/auto-loan-rates-usa/
I feel like not buying a Honda would be a pretty good way to opt out. In fact since the majority of car manufacturers are doing this bullshit I feel like simply not purchasing a new car is a great way to opt out of this.
Plenty of older not smart cars that are perfectly usable or fairly easily restored no reason to go dropping the money on a brand new one that's not only a privacy disaster but a repairability disaster on top of it.
I think my favorite is how almost all new cars now come with a sealed transmission with absolutely no way to replace the fluid in it with the claims of it being a "lifetime fluid" there is no such thing as a transmission fluid that can last and do its job forever, what they mean by LifeTime fluid is that it will last long enough to satisfy the warranty. And what they have deemed should be the usable life of the car.
It's sad that you can't replace the infotainment unit in a new car with an aftermarket unit anymore. I imagine 10 years from now we'll have a fleet of cars with outdated infotainment systems that can't connect with whatever future version of bluetooth/carplay/android auto anymore. Imagine driving cars with giant but useless infotainment screens that can't do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick because its outdated system can't connect to your new phone.
Car infotainment systems have always been outdated.
can’t do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick
i'd rather that then spyware
I don't think I'm going to ever buy a car made after 2020. Maybe earlier. None of the new features really appeal to me, and there are a lot of things like this that actively turn me off from wanting a new car.
If they could just give me an electric version of a 1985 VW Golf I'd be happy as a clam. But they want to put me in some lumpy, heavy, clumsy CUV with tracking technology and all the touchscreens and I don't like it.
EV conversions are definitely a thing. And the Golf platform seems to actually be one of the most popular.
After a quick Google, it looks like there are even some premade kits for the Golf specifically, even with installation available. Although I can only find UK/EU links quickly. May be more built-it yourself in the US.
For those who haven't yet bought a Honda:
They're basically all doing it, so make sure to research who is doing it the least.
I’m never buying a Honda again after buying a 2018 Civic model. Less than 10k on it when I bought it and the A/C went out. There’s an issue with the condenser on the 2018/2019 Hondas. They offered to pay HALF of what it’d cost to fix - I’d still be out more than a thousand. And from research online, apparently the replacements tend to fail too.
Pretty much every time I see the same model I ask if the owner has AC. They always have the same problem. It’s going to be real wonderful driving when it gets to the 100’s this summer…
You can opt out by simply not buying one :)
Remember when gov't banned Furbies (sp?) in some places? Seems like they would make the same decision for a lot of people in important positions regarding their car purchasing.
Pulling the fuse that includes OnStar at least keeps it from calling home. But there's usually some collateral damage.
I'm missing something. How is the data actually collected? How does it get out of my car? My car doesn't have any cellular features other than CarPlay. It has wifi, but I've never used it.
