Thank you to Naomi Brockwell.
Andrea Amico, Privacy4Cars.
Modern cars are spying on us, but to what extent?
Dale Wooden, aka, Woody, is a digital tracking expert and former instructor for a vehicle forensic company.
Sam Curry, a famous car hacker who researches car vulnerabilities.
"Car Hacking: The New Frontier of Cybersecurity," Conner Ivens, Tanium, October 3, 2022.
TOPICS COVERED IN THIS SERIES
* How easy it is to hack modern cars?
* And how strangers can get real-time access to your car cameras.
* Explores trackers in cars that you had no idea existed like the radio signals beaconed out by your tires that can be used to track you even if you're doing 70 miles an hour down the freeway.
* We dive into the perverse incentives that drive companies to collect as much data about you as possible and look at the history of when this all started.
"Toyota Japan Exposed Millions of Vehicles' Location Data for a Decade," Zach Whittaker, Tech Crunch, May 12, 2023.
Spoiler alert: it's been going on far longer than you ever imagined. And don't even get me started on used cars. We look at how the previous owner of your car might still have access to all your car's remote features, tracking tools, and cameras. And we explain how to wipe your own information and location history from your car before you sell it. These are the kinds of things we investigate as we dive under the hood of car privacy in the series.
WHAT DATA IS YOUR CAR COLLECTING?
What data is siphoned from your car every time you hit the road?
John McElroy,
"Your car knows where you're going it knows your kind of driving habits."
In short the modern car has become a privacy nightmare.
Andrea
Cars collect a lot of data and I don't know that consumers really understand how much data is being collected by vehicles the new trend in automotive is to talk about the software defined vehicles
"All about Software Defined Vehicle," Renault Group, April 24, 2023.
Which essentially means turning cars into smartphones.
In what ways are cars like smartphones? Well first, they both act as tracking devices, emitting all kinds of radio signals that can be used to pinpoint your location.
Woody,
Your car is a cell phone. Your car is a wireless hotspot. Your car is a Wi-Fi receiver, and your car is a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver.
But there are other important similarities too. Just as we often think of our phones as singular entities that send off data to Google and Apple, we regard cars the same way, sending off our data to Mazda or Toyota. But with our phones, data sharing doesn't stop with the device manufacturer because we then go ahead and install a hundred different apps on it and each of these apps also sends our data to countless companies. It turns out that car is actually working a similar way cars are platforms where a lot of other services are bolted on top most consumers don't realize that when they're driving you know there's a hundred s of companies literally that are collecting data from that vehicle and profiling you.
Lauren Smith,
Some information might be going to the manufacturer. Some may be staying locally on the car. Some may be going to your insurance company. Some may be going to a technology that you've opted in to use.
So exactly what information is being collected and where it's going is pretty hard to figure out. Varying by the make and model of the car, however, one thing we know for sure about basically all modern cars is: data is being harvested by the trunk load.
Sam Curry:
The easiest way to figure out what exactly your car is tracking and has access to is to just open the app.
Sam Curry has spent a lot of time examining these car apps where you do things like check the engine status and check your vehicle's cameras.
If you ever wanted to see where your car is at, or like start your car, or unlock your car, you can now do that with your phone.
The actual data that gets logged by the car includes video feeds, microphone feeds. The actual GPS location like overtime is 100% being logged. Your car has the systems built in that'll actually log every interaction with the vehicle so whether or not you unlock the car, turn the engine on, the air conditioner on, starting an engine, or finding a vehicle's location.
These are generally marketed as really convenient features for consumers.
Being able to control and locate your vehicle via like your phone is like a really cool thing.
But it's also important to remember this fundamental principle:
Woody:
If the app is free you are the product.
Sam Curry:
By just like using the apps, you're kind of just giving that data to that company. They'll probably . . . hold it in perpetuity.
And often we're not just handing our data to those companies . We are granting carte blanche to share our sensitive information with countless third parties.
