Mozilla review of 25 car brands finds they're "a privacy nightmare"

If you don't mind, please also highlight

health diagnosis data

genetic information

Because omfg, think about those for a second, and how any data that leaves your control is subject to eventual collection by law enforcement, legal or not, and anyone else willing to pay for it (or steal it):

For example, some bonehead rears your vehicle one day, but your health diagnosis data says you have a heart condition, or maybe just high blood pressure. These conditions can involve occasional lightheadedness, though you know yours is well controlled. You don't even think about it anymore because you take care of yourself and all your regular tests are good. But suddenly, you're in this minor accident, not even your fault, and it's no longer a simple rearending because some asshole has brought your health history into it so that YOU and not he will be on the hook for monetary damages.

(Triple if the bozo who hit you is some lame ass drunk rural county sheriff or elected official.)

And "genetic information" is code for DNA. How they would collect your DNA from your car I don't know, but do you REALLY want your genetic information associated with your vehicle and outside the confines of GINA* for the convenience of data sellers? I know I don't. (GINA is also the law that binds companies like 23andMe from selling your genetic data.) But the whole point of trying to legislate personal control over your own genetic information is because of all the dystopian scenarios that can easily evolve from others having it without your consent.

Yet now your car wants it too? Question this. Letting anyone have it by such means does a complete end run around any law meant to keep your personal genetic information private, and guts any rights you may have to your own privacy under the law, because you signed it away. Imagine the billions insurance companies could make, both health and auto, by refusing to pay for this or that because genetically it was a "pre-existing condition" or a "contributing factor" to you getting rearended by a drunk.

I've never been so thrilled to drive an ancient beater in my life.

*Note: GINA is weak already, but legislators are trying to weaken it further still: in 2018 a proposed change meant that "Employers would have been able to demand workers' genetic test results if the bill were to have been enacted."

At the very least.. cant the US implement one of the basic rules from GDPR?

In simple terms, what data can companies keep?

Data need to have: OK

Data nice to have: Not OK

How do they even capture this stuff? Are you expected to write some essays before you can buy the car?

How would your car even know your sexual activity?

BuT tHeY nEeD tHaT sO tHeY kNoW hOw nOt tO dIsCrImInAtE aGaInSt yOu.

I don't see how the things you highlighted are worse than any of the rest of it.

It's all bad.

They did that to me. I specifically gave them a card I knew was going to expire before the trial period was over and they got the new information anyway.

If I remember correctly, it's a "feature" the credit card companies have so your subscriptions don't lapse.

Credit cards have actually been doing that for years. It's a feature for recurring payments to reduce the amount of trouble users had when their CC number was compromised or it expired.

I'm not sure when you purchased your vehicle, but when I purchased my vehicle Dec 2022 I had to do that OnStar setup crap as well and just denied giving them any information. They said I wouldn't be able to get this or that but I didn't care so they didn't get that information. It took about 15 minutes with the person on the other side being a bit confused but just gave up when I said it the like 5th time.

Either way they don't need that information at any time unless you want their free trials that are almost never worth it.

By design and commonly accepted on recurring payments. Not even remotely new or connected with OnStar.

Weirded my TF out to say the least.

Honestly that shouldn't weird you out too much, that's just a convenience feature. And yeah, I know, some people put quotes around the word convenience. But others actually just use the word as is, a convenience.

What should freak the hell out of you is when you and your significant other are in the car talking about buying a new pair of tennis shoes, and then that evening when you're sitting at home YouTube shows you a commercial for tennis shoes, when you've never seen any ads for tennis shoes on YouTube before.

I wonder what happens if you only have a single card with no money on it.

That sounds awfully convenient and OnStar saves lives, so…

No kidding, it’s ridiculous to think they expect us to fork over $25k for cars that will invade our privacy. I have a 23 year old car I’ll drive till it’s dead before that ever happens.

I will drive my 2013 Honda Fit until the wheels fall off. I love it and with a $20 Bluetooth adapter, it has all the amenities I could need. I think it's insane that people are driving around with a tablet that controls their heat and radio.

I did use Onstar, but when my 2013 Volt went offline because of the 3g network sunset, I lost that functionality. Would have loved the ability to upgrade the cellular module in my car so I could have the security and safety features back, but one silver lining is disconnecting :) Of course, GM was going to quietly continue charging me for the same service after the connection died, but I canceled.

It would be a long time until I get a car (because it's convenient to live without one anyway), so I'm afraid the older "dumb cars" could become harder to buy or maintain then. I wonder if there are modern ones that you can make fully "dumb".

What about my 14 year old Renault Kagoo?

:-)

The first point is beyond stupid IMO when the bar is set at human. I've seen no reliable or consistent data that Teslas shitty autopilot is actually worse than a human. I've seen wild swings both ways.

The second point is, on point so to speak, and 100% should be addressed.

Wasn't the next line that this agreement they all signed was just something they made up and don't actually follow and no one enforces?

Are there really 0 Renaults in the US? Or I guess maybe just a few imported ones, but like they aren't officially sold there?

Are any other French brands available? I know at least the Germans are.

I guess French cars are too "sensible" for the US market?

lmao

They will be CaaS

We need cars that aren't giant IoT boxes that keep phoning home. The vast majority of "smart" car systems shouldn't need an Internet connection to function. But yes, I agree with your sentiment.

Never gonna happen unless governments force them.

What WILL happen is that more and more non-critical features will become pay to play. You'll rent the air conditioner in your car.

Installing your own software will become (or likely already is) illegal since if you're u do that you could play without pay on the car that you paid for with your money.

Corporations must be limited I'm what they can do, NOW. No more data monitoring and selling. No more ads pushed. No more pay to play. No more limiting what you can do with the products that you buy and own

Then we can joke for two decades that this year will be the year the Linux car will be able to drive

We've had up until the last few years.

You just need an older car with a DIN profile radio. You can swap it out for whatever you want.

I should chuck in a box with homebrew firmware for the lulz.

We had a Mozilla phone. Enough is enough.

The Teslas are powered by Linux as far as I know.

Someone could probably make a good amount of money charging like $50 to stick a nail through the cellular chip of new cars to disable that phone home shit.

US needs to regulate how data is collected by all companies. This shit is just gross.

This would be lovely, and I agree with you, but unfortunately the people scraping every inch of all of our data are the exact same people drafting legislation that they then turn over to their purchased politicians to submit with no edits.

Something needs to be done, but it can't be done in the system as is. We need a real overhaul, at least of electors if not the system itself, before anything is going to get better.

This is definitely an off-topic, but the problem with repairs is that no one really needs them and repair support is very expensive. People are used to simply change phones every two years and change cars every 3-4 years. This is a very different market from a few decades back.

When device turn-around is so fast, most devices won't break until their "end-of-life" of 2-3-4 years. It is better to simply offer a buy back scheme and recycle components into new phones, cars, etc. This is what consumers want and this is what companies are doing. Basically companies are doing two things: production and recycling.

This is different from days long gone when people used to buy a radio and then use it for over a decade. The business model in such climate was: production and repair. Repair requires specialty tooling and spare components and you can earn money on them. But if majority of your customers never repair anything, investment into repair will be a huge waste.

So, companies don't like Right To Repair because it's expensive for them. If it's expensive, there are only two solutions: increase the prices of goods (and no one likes that, not companies, not consumers) or stop recycling and force everyone to repair (which most consumers don't want and is an additional stress for companies).

Consumer attitudes should change for repairs to become a good option. It's like people crying about lack of headphone jacks on the internet. Reality though? 99% of billions of people give ZERO SHIT. If people really wanted headphone jacks, they would stop buying new phones en masse and jacks would be back in days.

And it's the same about privacy, micro-transactions, etc. No one is forcing you to play a game with micro-transactions, but most people do AND, most importantly, USE these micro-transactions. If they wouldn't there would be no crap in the games.

yeah idk why all electrical appliances need to be smart, didn't even want that in the first place

I do love the digital age and modern tech, but I understand many of the privacy concerns.

I want a free car with personalised ads!

With unfettered capitalism, we are always the product in some way.

It's the Microsoft business model taken to the extreme.

I believe that the 2012 Honda Accord V6 we had was near the height of automobiles.

Quit laughing.

It had excellent power - 270 HP. It was comfortable and reasonably fun to drive. It had modern safety features like air bags. It didn't have any of the nanny driver crap that drives me nuts in the car that replaced it. It got decent mileage for a heavy V6 - on trips we'd see around 32 mpg, 25 mpg around town, day-to-day driving, in part because of the cylinder deactivation when cruising. Damn thing likely would have run forever if it hadn't been wrecked - at 8 years old and 100,000 miles, we had zero plans to replace it. And at that point, aside from regular maintenance, I think we had replaced the driveshafts and one lug stud that had broken (which was likely the result of someone overtightening it at some point, not a failure at the manufacturer).

I never thought I'd say this about an Accord, but: Damn, I really miss that car. A lot.

Maybe a 2013 to get the better styling and improved infotainment system; the 2012 was not a looker, and it didn't have things like music over Bluetooth, and the DVD-based nav system was dated when the car was new. But it ran and ran and ran, and I never had to worry about that car.

Since then, cars have become less powerful in a bid to offset inefficient SUVs and still meet CAFE, and they have those irritating driver nanny features with alarms blaring as the system misinterprets the situation and thinks you're about to crash into something. God, I hate the car that replaced that Accord. And pretty much all cars have those damn "features" now, so even if I turn them off, I gotta pay for them and carry them around all the time.

That era was apparently the sweet spot where you could buy a modern, comfortable, powerful, efficient sedan and still have fun driving it.

i am holding on to my 2006 dumb hunk of metal..no spyware..also solid body instead of those new cars with body made of thin aluminium..or the alternative which would be an impotent electric smartphone on 4 wheels

Yeah! Fuck the environment when your car wants to track which apps you use on it!

*Edit: Lol you guys would be hilarious if the climate situation wasn’t so dire.

Is it better for the environment to drive an old car?

In conclusion, buying a used car may avoid the carbon emissions of manufacturing a new one – but you should also bear in mind the lower fuel economy, higher exhaust emissions, and ongoing maintenance requirements.

So no, it’s not always better to just drive a leaky piece of shit forever instead of upgrading. The car you’re buying has already been made, it’s carbon been produced, and now you’re generating less emissions with the newer more efficient vehicle. This is pretty simple stuff to keep in mind next time you want to act smug about smog.

Exaclly how I feel. Can't buy many things because all brands of it are broken by principle.

Absolutely. My 2006 car is in the shop right now getting fixed and will ultimately end up costing me around $3.5k. They were a bit surprised I told them to fix it, but I don't WANT a new car. I like my car, it has all the features I want, is a manual, doesn't connect to the internet, and most importantly, has physical buttons and dials to control everything! Overall it's in great condition as well.

I love my car, and like you will be keeping it until it becomes prohibitively expensive to repair vs buy something else, or I can no longer get parts. Hopefully by then something will be done about the privacy and touchscreen situations.

I mean, read the article and especially some of the individual reviews. GDPR is all over the place.

As a TL;DR cars made for the EU market score much better than US models, but the devil is in the details. If you've got some time at hand, it's a real eye-opener to go over their summary at the very least.

Hopefully, it will apply to anything with internet connectivity and your personal data.

Permission is probably mandatory to use your car.

There's also a number you can call to have them stop doing it, supposedly.

My favorite: It collects the GPS coordinates of where you turned off the car and transmits that information. Every time you shut off the engine. We didn't get the nav feature in our 2020 Mazda 3, but the hardware is still there so it can do this (and so buyers can pay $300 for the SD card that makes it work, which we didn't).

But at least most of the information they collect is about the car, not the people, unlike some of the other brands.

I wonder if they detect me cursing at the car when it does something stupid, like swerving back toward obstacles I was trying to avoid. (That "feature" got turned off. I don't need that shit in my life.)

Unfortunately convincing my wife we should buy an older car that doesn't have all this shit is going to be a huge mountain to climb. Sigh. I hate new cars.

Omg black mirror

My cars best tech is the CD player lmao

Same, not exactly old but it's a 2016 Kia Rio in the minimal configuration. Can't say whether the electric window openers or the CD player would take the number one spot for highest technological advancement.

Sadly my 34 year old car is off the road at the moment. I loved driving it because it was so simple. Basic on/off switches. No computers.

They keep it pretty narrow, their focus has always been very heavy in privacy. They don't report on anything else really, just the privacy aspect.

Best way to sell a browser and software services built on privacy is to do a lot of consumer reports emphasizing the value of privacy.

Somebody had to take up the mantle since Consumer Reports cannot be trusted anymore

Because when you're big enough to have a recognizable brand name, it nearly unequivocally means you have to sell out to those who can fund you. Consumer Reports dropped off decades ago.

Bumping of the seat in parking mode?

Cameras, microphones and sensors

I wondered about that too. Maybe it's stuff like "driver visits this address every Friday and Saturday night" but that hardly seems like solid data. Could just always listen to the installed mic intended for hands free calling and instead analyze for moans...

Same with Mazda!

I misread that as emissions at first and had a laugh

Could you technically not have penisary contact with her volvo?

I assume that you're talking about the Dacia Spring which got 1 star (though the Renault Zoe got 0 stars recently and a few others did too in the past).

So whilst you're not wrong that these cars currently hold the lowest ratings of cars tested with the new post-2020 procedure, I'm sure a lot of older cars would fare far worse.

And it's fundamentally flawed to subject a tiny 970kg EV city car to the same tests as a 2-3 ton towering SUV. Besides the vastly different use cases, bigger and heavier vehicles will have an inherent advantage in most of the tests - hint none of them are adjusted for the weight of the vehicle.

I'm not saying this is somehow wrong, they're simulating crashing into an average car or a stationary immovable object, just we're automatically discounting small vehicles which have a genuinely valid reason to exist.

The new NCAP ratings only makes sense if we're saying affordable, small, light cars don't need to exist. Like everything automotive nowadays, it's designed to gently nudge us towards big lumbering swollen hatchbacks as the holy grail of the car industry.

Not to mention that Dacia delayed the Sandero. Bad news.

We could all start playing a game where we pretend to be people interested in shit we have zero interest in. Make the data they want to sell useless with tons of red herrings and false positives. Like led-embedded tennis racket grips, shower head louffas, Donald Trump branded TP, pokemon themed professional grade tooling, camera turrets coming out of the roofs of SUVs, or canned air except it's filled with CEO farts because consumers love sniffing them so much.