Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

grayman ,

Just pass a damn privacy law already.

Grass ,

I'm still sad about not doing the EV conversion of the 80s civic wagon back when I had a job that I made money in. Definitely wouldn't be able to spy on me. New cars have so much stuff that is a mystery and for some reason they need a lot more fixing.

shadycomposer ,

Do you mean Tesla?

MagneticFusion OP ,

If only it was just them and not every car manufacturer

Jimmycrackcrack ,

This sounds good and promising but it's should be noted that they do not have to answer to the FTC according to this article, it has merely been recommended in a letter to the FTC by one senator that they should investigate some specific car companies. There doesn't seem to be any new way in which they are more or less accountable to the FTC than they were or weren't already and there's no obligation on the strength of this letter to do any investigation nor any guarantee of a positive outcome if they did. A rare and nice little show of support from a member of the political class for privacy rights but nothing substantive or concrete.

Anticorp ,

Why only specific companies when Mozilla exposed literally every single manufacturer for massive privacy intrusions? Every car on the market got an F rating.

Jimmycrackcrack ,

Hedging my bets in trying to make my statements correct. Phrasing as I did, my statements are true if it's just a few companies under potential scrutiny or all car companies in the US so it's the truest way to write with the facts I haven't my disposal.

dangblingus ,

Are they bad at privacy or good at data scraping? It's not like they intend to protect your privacy. That doesn't make the line go up.

phoneymouse ,

This is what I love Mozilla for. They can be credited for making this an issue that is getting some attention.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

And yet they can't seem to figure out that people want a peace of mind and will pay and use services that make them feel better.

Mozilla as a company has great brand familiarity all they need to do is to a big launch of a cool product.

phoneymouse ,

Yeah they should’ve made what Proton has.

dubyakay ,

That would require them to not be US based.

crispy_kilt ,

Not possible in the USA

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Great stuff, great initiative by Mozilla to being this to light!

sadreality ,

Imagine spending good money on a product and then some creep is able to track your every move, collect that data and then sell it some other creep.

RandoCalrandian ,
@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social avatar

That isn’t what you’re getting with any cell phone?

onion ,

Not if you install a degoogled rom :)

navi ,

Carrier data aggregation entered the chat.

onion ,

Touché. But the less the better

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

You don't have to have it out of a Faraday bag/turned on everywhere you go, only when using it directly.

RandoCalrandian ,
@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social avatar

SIM card tracks location and sells it too

Dr_Evil ,

Cell phones don't cost tens of thousands of dollars and have easy ways to get around tracking if you're really concerned. While I can avoid certain apps on my phone or install a different os, doing something similar for new cars is currently impossible apart from tearing it apart to find and unplug the modem.

Grouchy , (edited )

You can't stop location tracking on cellular devices. If it's connected to a cell tower, you're being tracked and profiled.

LWD , (edited )

You can put your phone in a Faraday bag.

How am I going to do that to my car :(

RandoCalrandian ,
@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social avatar

In steps, and you kinda drive onto it

Not great for mobile operation, however 😬

azron ,

Carrier is still slurping your dataz.

shortwavesurfer , (edited )

The government may do something. It will just take them five years to do so.

Edit: In the meantime, buy yourself a bike or a golf cart or four wheeler or something. Though maybe not a four-wheeler or golf cart, since I don't think you can drive those on regular roads, but you can ride a bike on regular roads, so maybe that. Or a motorcycle. That's putting your money where your mouth is because a motorcycle is highly not likely to have spy equipment just because of lack of space.

Edit 2: Motorcycles do not burn fuel as cleanly so are more harmful to the environment though so trade-offs

Edit 3: open source cars I wonder if that's a thing

evasive_chimpanzee ,

Motorcycles do not burn fuel as cleanly so are more harmful to the environment though so trade-offs

I'm assuming probably not on a "vehicle miles traveled" basis, though.

Cataphract ,

From a link someone provided above it seems legit.

the motorcycle used 28% less fuel than the comparable decade car and emitted 30% fewer carbon dioxide emissions, but it emitted 416% more hydrocarbons, 3,220% more oxides of nitrogen and 8,065% more carbon monoxide. The MythBusters’ conclusion: ‘At best, it’s a wash. Motorcycles are just as bad for the environment as cars,’ Savage said on the show. ‘At worst, they’re far worse.’

I recognize it's not an official study, but seems to be more concrete than anecdotal evidence and changed my perspective some. The article also quotes a researcher at UC Riverside which makes more sense on what's going on

‘We’ve been working to clean up passenger vehicles since the ‘70s,’ said Kent Johnson, who’s on the research faculty at UC Riverside and is director of its emissions lab, where the MythBusters’ numbers were analyzed. ‘We’ve been putting on catalytic converters and sensors to improve their ability to control emissions. We didn’t start doing that on motorcycles until the 2000s. It just shows you how far we’ve taken passenger vehicles and how difficult it is to do the same thing with motorcycles. First of all, there’s no room. And the incremental cost might double the price of a bike.’

(link)

SniffDoctor ,

Or just get an older vehicle.

LWD ,

This only works up to a point, and that's a little concerning IMO. It'll be true for longer than, say, cellphones, but no car lasts forever and at some point they could be prohibitively expensive.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

The last car I bought is a 2014 model year. The one before that is a 2016. I'm not buying anything made after 2020, even if I have to squeeze gasoline from the rocks with my bare hands. Not because I don't like electric, but because I don't want a spy appliance to drive around in, even if it has emoji headlights.

shortwavesurfer ,

If I remember correctly, you're probably already buying two new and need to go back further to like 2003 era or before.

niucllos ,

Anything with OnStar capability can definitely track you, which I know started at least as far back as 2006 in Saabs

shortwavesurfer ,

And even before that, you have to worry about the dealership plugging one of those devices into your car and pulling the data from it, even if it's not uploaded remotely, it could still be grabbed. I think you may have to go back to about 2000 or before to see cars that don't have that or it's not common or does not collect very much data at all.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

My ‘14 has no connectivity beyond GPS and Bluetooth. My ‘16 had internet connectivity but only via 2G which doesn’t work anymore. I think I’m good.

shortwavesurfer ,

What about the device the dealership can plug into your car and pull the diagnostic data from it and upload it while you take your car in for maintenance or whatever.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

Only rich people and idiots take their car to a dealer for service.

shortwavesurfer ,

That's a fair point, but as cars have gotten more and more complicated, it takes more than just your normal shade tree mechanic to fix them in a lot of cases.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

Sure, but there's still a lot you can do with a cheap bluetooth OBD-II reader.

shortwavesurfer ,

Fair enough.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ,

It wasn’t until recently that that basically all cars came with tracking built in. Some not that old models (like my 2018 Outback) can easily be bypassed with a quick harness install. But others are integrated into the ECU AMD cannot be removed.

shortwavesurfer ,

What about the dealership uploads? Where? They plug that device into your car to see if there's any errors or whatever and They can pull the data from it then and upload it I Want to say those go back as far as about 2000

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ,

That’s the same module. The dealer could add their own to the car, but those would be removable. Also on BHPH dealers add shit like that to make repoing the car easier.

admiralteal , (edited )

maybe not a four-wheeler or golf cart, since I don’t think you can drive those on regular roads

Look up your local neighborhood / neighborhood electric vehicle / low-speed vehicle laws.

There are some places where they are allowed. There's also a lot of places where the cops just don't care enough to do anything about it, at least so long as you stay off arterial roads.

Though I cannot recommend a cargo ebike enough. Long-tail or bakfiets, though I personally prefer the long-tails as they ride more like bikes and the racks on the back tend to be extremely versatile for mounting weird stuff. The cheapest good ones are around $1,200 with near-0 cost of ownership. Incredibly useful vehicles.

ben ,

open source cars I wonder if that's a thing

I recently heard Mercedes have some focus on open source.
https://opensource.mercedes-benz.com/

shortwavesurfer ,

That's cool. We definitely need open source car software But when I said that I was thinking more about hardware Because with open source hardware you couldn't sneak connectivity chips Etc. in without people knowing about it

stringere ,

Something like this?

https://www.openmotors.co/evplatform/

shortwavesurfer ,

Yeah, something like that looks like it's on the right track.

stringere ,

I've been following the progress on this for a while. Pretty awesome stuff.

https://www.opensourceecology.org/

Sir_Kevin ,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Motorcycles do not burn fuel as cleanly so are more harmful to the environment though so trade-offs

That very much depends on the bike and if the owner is a douchebag that notifies it to be horrible.

Also, motorcycles can get around 50 miles per gallon. So that's a win vs other ICE vehicles.

shortwavesurfer ,

It's not the gas mileage, that's the problem. It's the amount of CO2 and whatever it emits into the air is higher in particulate matter or whatever because there's not a catalytic converter and such like there is in cars. at least from what I understand.

ollie ,

source?

shortwavesurfer ,

https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/greenspace/story/2011-09-28/mythbusters-asks-are-motorcycles-greener-than-cars

MonkderZweite ,

There are electro cycles.

Onihikage ,
@Onihikage@beehaw.org avatar

Not cars per se, but with a few tools and a kit, you can convert a bicycle into a pretty great pedal-assist e-bike from the comfort of your own garage, cost-competitively with pre-built e-bikes, especially if you already own the bike you're converting. Everyone has their own preference for the ideal bicycle, and there are plenty of DIY e-bike build guides on the web, so that might as well be open source.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Or you could drive a older car. You will need to learn how to do at least of of the maintenance yourself but being able to do simple maintenance like a oil change is a good skill and isn't hard to learn.

Classy ,

Just bought a 2014 RAV4

Looking forward to zipping around my friend's 2023 Bronco in 20 years when mine is still kicking at 400k miles and his transmission took a shit

Venator ,

Open source cars are kind of a thing, if you're doing an engine swap, or building from scratch or something, that will usually require you to remove all of the privacy violating parts as a side effect. You could probably achieve a similar result with slightly less effort by removing the infotainment and replacing the ECU with an aftermarket one...

Most of the privacy violation parts are just in the infotainment though, so if you manage to replace that you'll be pretty much there. Only issue is newer cars have all the hvac and things like reverse cameras controlled through it...

Another option would just be to make sure it has no network connections.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • privacy@lemmy.ml
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •