It’s Official: Cars Are Terrible at Privacy and Security
www.mozillafoundation.org
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the worst category of products that we have ever reviewed

I am sure this article has been shared before, however I wanted to have a look at this topic.
The articles short summary is this:

All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the worst category of products that we have ever reviewed

I am currently driving a 2014 Ford Fiesta which just has a radio with a CD player and Bluetooth. I do not need more than that in a car.

The reason I am looking at all is that that the Fiesta does not belong to me and the friend owning it will be moving out in a bit, so I kinda need another one.

There seems to be one brand that is not as bad as the other ones (but still bad): Renault; mozilla’s review…
Maybe I will have a look at their cars.

What do you guys think? Stick to older used cars and not use an EV or look at which of the manufacturers have the least bad privacy policy?

  • 18107@aussie.zoneEnglish
    7·
    3 days ago

    I have an older Nissan Leaf in Australia. While I’m sure the car is trying to send telemetry, it only has a 3G modem, and the 3G network has been switched off for all of Australia.

    If you have a newer car, it may be possible to remove the telematics fuse and ignore the related DTC.

        • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 day ago

          It’s definitely designed to be able to send signals to satellites, and there are satellites designed to pick up signals from devices that aren’t designed to reach them.

          But, they can also just see where your car is going visually, and get any audio/video from inside with your phone that connects directly to cell towers, so you might be right that no satellite is actually ever spying on your car’s 3G modem.

          • dev_null@lemmy.ml
            2·
            1 day ago

            It’s definitely designed to be able to send signals to satellites

            Do you have any source for that? Not that I don’t believe you but I can’t find anything on this

            • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              1 day ago

              The sources are just people who know saying it, like me. The designers wouldn’t publicly admit it or anything.

              Cell phone range is impacted by ground obstruction, the curvature of the earth itself getting in the way, atmospheric effects

              The closest satellites are about 160km up, where a 3G transmitter can reach when it’s looking straight up with no Earth and less air in the way

              The companies that designed the 3G standard and manufactured some of the phones also do military contracts for stuff like the radios in spy satellites, they knew what they were doing

              It also stands out as intentional because making the range go beyond the curvature of the earth is just crippling infrastructure, wasting battery and putting millions of people in danger (can’t call 911 with a dead phone)

              Lower-power devices with mesh networking would have made more sense with the powerful processors and high usage phones were getting by the middle of the 3G era, but the “cellular” design is much more convenient to monitor