How Your New Car Tracks You

[Caute_cautim]

Hi All

An interesting article in Wired indicating how new cars track your movements:

"Andrea Amico, the founder of Privacy4Cars, says people understand very little about what data their cars can collect as there is little education and “the level of detail and transparency varies” across manufacturers. His tool ranks most modern vehicles as “smartphones on wheels,” as they’re able to collect heaps of data and wireless send that information to manufacturers."

https://www.wired.com/story/car-data-privacy-toyota-honda-ford/

Regards

Caute_Cautim

[Steve-Wilme]

And with the introduction of EVs, your movements can be tracked to some degree by your use of the public charging infrastructure, which captures details of your vehicle each time you charge.  If you think you can avoid this by continuing to drive a petrol or diesel, then just consider the number of ANPR cameras at filling stations, car parks and on highways.  

So personally, I'll continue to drive older, cheaper vehicles without all these modern 'conveniences', which I'd be unlikely to use anyway, so to me there is no appreciable benefit.  I'll just keep using the satnav between my ears and my old Alcatel non smart phone.

[ericgeater]

I've not trusted cars since rental companies began adding GPS, then fining drivers for excessive speed as documented in the GPS data dumps once the vehicle was returned.

I also change the onboard language to "Italian" when I rent cars nowadays, because I can.

[dcontesti]

@ericgeater  LOL sorry, that tickled my funny bone today.

@Caute_cautim Great article, I have always maintained that my car knew too much about me especially when I came into a little extra cash.....;)

But in all seriousness, tracking of you is becoming more and more common.  As an example, I will be traveling to Iceland later this year and to get there, I have been looking at many routings. So of course on my computer I have been looking at airfare and hotels etc.  (All social media turned off - no facebook, no linkedin, etc) and yet on my PHONE, Now in facebook, I am getting ads for numerous hotels and airline.  Yes I know that its my cookies, or my cache but it shows that all of this tracking is being used to customize my experience.  

Orwell's 1984 comes to mind.

d

[Early_Adopter]

I've solved the car tracking problem by no longer having a car... It's nothing but trains and planes from here on in...

If you go to Iceland then you should take the Icelandic horse everywhere (unfortunately it's not practical (you need to coach from Reykjavik) but the tolt is a very comfortable gait). I'm also minded of the time I turned on a new device for the first time in the W in DC - there was no continuity from any other devices, and the Internet didn't know what to try to sell me - so optimistically it went for broke and showed me lots of pictures of B2s while informing me of all of the benefits of 'Strike'.

[Steve-Wilme]

Tolt is preferable to flying pace.  I don't believe there are tracking devices fitted to Icelandic horses.