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Biden Calls Chinese Electric Vehicles a Security Threat (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It seems like the "cars tracking you" problem is a very real and very serious thing that should obviously be legislated separately of electric vehicles or country of manufacture.

I got a Mazda recently, and I was reading all the ownership paperwork, and the guy asked me what I was looking for. I said "I'm looking for the language about what data Mazda is collecting about me." And the guy laughed and said there's nothing in the paperwork about that. They just do it. You can't shut it off.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Question: Who is paying for all these 5G Cell connections that 'every car has'? How is my data getting from my car in my garage to (Brand name)?

I sure as shit am not giving my car my wifi password.

Is my Android phoning home? How does it know who to phone home to?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Car manufacturers are. They probably get a bulk discount on relatively cheap data plans. It was enough for GM to keep OnStar running until Verizon got rid of supporting all 2G and 3G service in the USA.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do we know how long they are paying for that connection?

I can't imagine that's cheap. Is a 2016 car internet connected without my notice? How do you confirm?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

No, but the Wikipedia article seems to indicate that OnStar has the ability to store GPS and phone contact information even if you aren't subscribed.

Also, I can't imagine that buying several millions of data connections would be that expensive, especially if all that those connections are doing are sending out a ping of reports once a month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Amazon did a thing where if your wifi is down Alexa can connect to a neighbors Alexa which will relay the message to the server.

I imagine a car could do the same much easier, you pull up to the lights next to a car from the same manufacturer and it relays all your telemetrics.

It's time for an open source car.