A Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors.
OK, I finally read the original allegation and this is grossly irresponsible reporting. We can put our pitchforks down. The plaintiffs never even claim that the automakers can access your text messages in the first place. This is entirely about the car’s hardware locally caching the messages it displays, some of which could possibly then be read from the cache using specialized and not commonly available equipment.
Is it something to be aware of? Sure. Is something the average person should be concerned about? Not really.
I believe CarPlay is still almost entirely controlled by the Apple device and the screen in the car is a glorified display. So the car would likely know that you’re using CarPlay but probably not much else.
I bought my first car this year, I am very happy with it, it is a 2021 Seat Leon PHEV, but shit like this is terrible.
I remember several years ago when I noted that cars had started comming with emergency SOS buttons and apps, that made me realize that there had to be a built in mobile phone connection, and after reading some more, yep, I was right, automakers put in a cell phone module with an eSIM that is allways connected, meaning the car keeps talking to the automakers servers, even if you don’t connect a phone.
This means that it is worth it to the automakers to add a phone module and continously pay for a subscription for every car, even if you don’t use the feature, that is scary.
Working for a Mobile network provider that does connectivity for cars among other things i can add to that, that they are paying a fairly high price for this stuff too.
How did that quote go again? “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”? Even things you think may be innocuous can and will be used against you if given reason to.
The car maker will gather your mundane data, and all other services you, your friends, parents, parents friends and employer use will also do that. Then data will be deanonymized, traded, aggregated, traded around some more and aggregated again. Suddenly all actors have a complete profile on you and your social network, where they can very accurately infer many data points not explicitly collected. Good luck gdpring every company in existence. Your profile is eternal and growing. Also 20% of entities holding copies of your data also didn’t care to keep your data safe and lost it to the criminal element. Somewhere on the dark net you can now buy access to a database where you can query for that shopping list you sent over your cars entertainment system and also your sexual preferences and social security number.
All big companies do analytics now. They have files on virtually every consumer from buy huge volumes of data and deanonynizing it, and then they know just about everything about you.
I'm short of time so I haven't found the original complaint but according to the appeals court ruling, the plaintiffs never claimed any actual damages. The heading of the law in question is "Violating right of privacy—Civil action—Liability for damages."
Is this a privacy violation? Yes. Did these people suffer any actual damages under the law? Evidently not.
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