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Ford Panopticon: Crowd-Sourced Car Tracking Revealed in New Patent (fuelarc.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/nottheonion

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We all know automakers want to keep tabs on their cars. Stolen vehicle tracking? Sure. Fleet management? Fine. Microphone eavesdropping to serve more ads? Hate it, but OK, that’s a thing. Hold onto your tin-foil hats: Ford just filed a patent for something that takes vehicle tracking into full-blown Twilight Zone territory. Always-On Tracking… In Your Car, or Somebody Else’s.

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[–] eatCasserole 49 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The car listening to everything you say is absolutely not ok.

I get that's not what this article is about, but I hate how they're getting creepier and creepier things normalized.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

That article was what gave me the idea to search the patent database. All sorts of creepy shit in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

Some fun stuff, automatic dog treat dispensers and stuff, but mostly appalling violations of your privacy. Welcome to the future, where Dearborn is always watching.

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

I've thought of creating a tracking-free app for modern cars that would be vendor agnostic so if your family has 2 or 3 cars from different manufacturers, it'd still be the same app instead of 3. But even if I do no tracking, the car company will still track the vehicle, they only lose out on the data from your phone, which likely isn't nearly as interesting for them anyways.

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

It's why the rare times I end up going in my college club instructors EV I tend to stay fairly quiet. Quieter than normal.

[–] eatCasserole 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Unfortunately I think the ICE cars are just as stalkerish at this point (if the EV=creepy implication is intended). Kia and nissan even have bits in their privacy policies about monitoring sexual activity somehow.

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

I am simply flabbergasted to find that you are correct about KIA.

Collected information: Health, sex life, or sexual orientation.

https://www.kia.com/us/en/privacy.html

[–] eatCasserole 3 points 1 week ago

Oh man I was just repeating what I read from an article, but there's so much more in that list.

racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs; union membership; genetic data; unique biometric information; citizenship or immigration status; contents of certain mail, emails, and text messages; or health, sex life or sexual orientation information.

Surely none of this could be used for nefarious purposes, right?