Is there a list of cars which don't have remote data collection?
I just got z-wave locks from a company ultraloq, figured I don't want the integration with the app etc. I will just use z-wave and connect to my local offline hub. But once I get down to set it up, I can only connect to the hub via z-wave from the ultraloq app. I install the app and I need to register an account by providing first name, last name, email and phone number, then the only way to pair my lock with the app is by enabling bluetooth and providing location access to the app with gps enabled. I do that and then I find out that once I install the app and register the lock, I am not allowed to use it in standalone/offline mode (setup/change lock codes directly from the lock) unless I do a factory reset. Funny enough, if I factory reset, I lock is no longer connected to my hub on z-wave.
Basically to use z-wave with my offline hub, I need to provide the company my gps location, first name, last name, email and phone number and stream data of lock usage every time the door is unlocked/locked to the company. How is this not a security risk for the company? If they ever get hacked, all their customer PII data including the gps location of where the locks are installed are compromised.
They do care - it is just what they care about is diametrically opposed to your interests. The post-sales revenue stream from collected data is not only profitable, but in some cases more profitable than the sale itself.
I don't really believe in this theory. Certainly the average HN commenter trends more privacy-aware than the average person in our societies but I know many "normal" people who don't like the intrusion but accept it because they don't see any viable alternative apart from giving up a normal life.
The correct solution when competition in commercial markets doesn't solve a problem like this because it's just too profitable for everyone to carry on the abuse is for governments to regulate in the public interest. Of course that relies on elected representatives to do their jobs and not just pander to whichever industry gives its lobbyists the most funding so the success of the strategy is likely to vary wildly depending on which country you live in.
I think the current incentive has warped the market beyond repair for certain products.
Take TV for example, non-smart TVs cost the same or more than smart TVs because manufacturers can subsidise smart TVs’ cost by selling or utilising data. Not to mention other “benefits” like locking consumers into their ecosystem: a lot of Korean newly weds buy all Samsung or all LG for electronics for this reason. With all these incentives, it makes sense for the companies to only make smart TVs.
We need regulations to offset these incentives. There most be a real tangible cost to collecting data and appliances should be required to use open protocols. Then it will make more sense for manufacturers to make just normal TVs that can compete with smart TV.
Will any of this happen? Probably not.
Nobody ever reads the manual. Nobody wants to know whats inside their gadgets. Nobody has bandwidth to consider the tradeoffs of data collection.
Life is short.
So the company collects data that in some cases is more (much more) valuable than their main product.
I only buy stuff that I can reflash (tasmota, esphome, or whatever), because everything else will either be deprecated, the cloud will be discontinued, the app wont work on the newest android, or there will be a huge security breach, that the company won't fix for "legacy" devices.
This makes stuff pretty limited, but you can still find atleast some things that are (eg.) esp8266 based.
Modern automotive hardware is almost completely undifferentiated, and this commoditization means the hardware is essentially being sold at cost. The only opportunities for differentiation, and therefore profit, in the automotive market involve leveraging the vast quantities of sensor data thrown off by vehicles. In many cases the data of interest is not even about the driver per se but the external environment. There are many use cases for this data, both by the automotive OEM and third parties. In most developed countries, both the automotive OEM and the government have a right to this data. The regulatory frameworks for this were put in place decades ago.
Organizations that work with this data have great difficulty because off-the-shelf data infrastructure can't handle it in a meaningful way. Currently, exploitation has been more theoretical than practical.
A car + phone combination is always more capable, because its almost always up-to-date and the user is already used to it.
Imagine if the whole world refused to use any car older than 2 years... how many cars would have to be made every year? even if that made any economic sense, it certainly doesn't make any environmental sense. You might not think of it this way but those people you know are privileged, they would not be able to get a new car less than every 2 years unless there was a 2nd hand market. Cars need to last.
I have family that work at a car dealership. Most of their business comes from people leasing or trading in vehicles every couple years (or less).
I'll take just the aux then, at least as long as I can. Aux (as in: 3.5mm jack on both ends or else on one end and the other one cinch or DIN to support even older devices) is something which has been working fairly universally to get music from any portable and even some not-so-portable players to amps in the past 30 years or so, extend to like 60 years to include anything compatible but with DIN (just a rough guess here, I still have some old Telefunken radio with an aux input via DIN and I'd estimate that is it's age; still works, moreover they really figured out nice warm bass from small speakers back then already). It's simple, it's a de facto standard, it really just works, it's a good idea (doubling as headphone out) and well-executed.
Bluetooth audio on the other hand tries to be all of that, but I never quite got the feeling it's there yet, after all those years, and I wonder it will ever be the same level of 'just works'.
There is a hack[0] that you can do that will give you android auto. I do find maps on my dash is pretty helpful. There's no great place to put my phone to see maps and picking up my phone frequently to navigate isn't that great. Though sometimes I have problems with it disconnecting from my phone (cabled). But then again, I have a Scion iA (rebaged M3). I'm not sure if anyone knows of a newer (and maintained) version of this.
Though there are a lot of things about android auto that piss me off and it makes me feel confident that the engineers aren't dogfooding. I get that they want voice commands, but when those fail the solution shouldn't be "pick up your phone, detach, do the thing, reattach." What a crazy failure mode. Who thought this was okay?
Everything made before this technology existed?
Here it is:
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Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge I am not joking. This is one of the big reasons why I haven't bought a new car with modern automation and connectivity for a long time.
I think they will be unreliable.
I think they will be insecure.
I think they will be privacy-invasive.
I think the technology at the original time of sale will age quickly and manufacturers will abuse that to extract more money from current owners or any potential new owners who might buy the vehicle from them.
I think the technology will allow for artificial limitations on vehicles' physical capabilities and encourage manufacturers to make pay-to-play style upgrades and rental models the industry standard.
And I think there is a non-trivial risk that eventually someone will successfully exploit a remote vulnerability on a popular model and gain enough physical control over a large number of vehicles simultaneously to cause injury or even loss of life on a massive scale.
Absolutely nothing I have seen about the auto industry, the people who lead it, or the people who regulate it would undermine any of those claims and apart from the last one there seems to be plenty of evidence that they are already starting to happen.
Of course this does nothing on the security side - the fact that the vehicle is still somewhat accessible from the outside makes it less secure. But not having to worry about privacy at least is nice.
If they manage to install ABS/ESP, they might actually be an interesting choice, if it weren't for the likely lack of EU market authorisation and spare parts.