Professional Hacker Reveals How Car Industry Spies on Drivers

Reading the posts in this thread makes me think of Edward Snowden's book, "Permanent Record". He writes about all the ways the government can monitor our lives. There is no such thing as privacy anymore.
Read that book if you get a chance; it is very informative.

 

Reading the posts in this thread makes me think of Edward Snowden's book, "Permanent Record". He writes about all the ways the government can monitor our lives. There is no such thing as privacy anymore.
Read that book if you get a chance; it is very informative.

 

Cell phones too!

 

It is all about selling the data. The data exists in a lot of other forms - phone, gps, face recognition, credit card or any non-cash financial instrument usage, toll-road passes, license plate scanners, and who knows what else. The advantage I get from having my phone connected to my truck is far more than the privacy loss since the privacy is already lost.

I was looking for an OBD-II data logger for my truck and learned that, coming soon, manufacturers will be locking down most OBD info. They've made statements that it was intended to support technicians troubleshooting and not people having access to their own data and they're using that excuse to justify their plans - but they'll still have access to all of the log data that we're getting. The thing is, the car manufactures are a bit late but they've finally joined the data mining/selling game.

 

ODB enables the debugging of the complexity of the ICE and related systems such as emissions and air/fuel mixtures. Once EV's become the norm the complexity of the ICE disappears and thus the ODB becomes largely redundant.

 

The thing is, it is the consumers that wanted all this data capability put into cars.

They wanted them to sync as soon as you entered so that you could play Pandora without cables. And a built-in GPS to track everywhere that you went, live connection to plot and work around traffic backups, and be smart enough so that you could give it simple 1 and 2 word commands and it would know exactly where you wanted to go.

And that is going to continue, because that is what people want.

 

OBD-II was first defined as a standard in 1988. It has been mandatory in all cars since 1996. It had nothing at all to do with what consumers want; it was all about what the California Air Resources Board (CARB) wanted.

I have a high-end 2019 RAM 3500 with 12.1 inch display. The apps available are not at all the apps I want or would choose; the apps are based on the deals that FCA was able to make with app makers. Their goal is not to give you what you want but to give you what you'll buy.

The consumer has not been the customer in virtually anything digital for a long time. When you buy Windows, even full retail versions, you're not the customer; you're the sucker. The customer is whoever Microsoft makes deals with for media distribution, etc. The sad part is, they get you to actually pay them for the tool they'll use to mine your data and present you with advertisements. Sort of like OnStar and GM - they charge you 1200 dollars extra for OnStar and then make you pay them thousands to use the service.

Data in your vehicle is there solely to make money for the car manufacturer who, generally, doesn't even create the content but are paid by others to include their content in your car.