Onstar Navigation System to Deliver In-Car Spam

pneuma_66 writes: "According to the New York Times (Free reg, don't cha know) navigation systems, like OnStar, are planning to deliver ads based on the car's location. For example, the system will 'notify' the driver of sales in nearby stores. The vp of OnStar says "The privacy and the confidentiality of our subscribers are of the utmost importance", well lets see how the big companies play with this new wealth of information."

Comments

Re:No, YOU are a fucking idiot

[Dredd13]

Let's see: Radio - doesn't just spontaneously make noise after being silent. The driver of a car generally knows his radio is on and isn't distracted by it. The "guy selling flowers" is, of course, one of the various pedestrians and road objects the driver is "being aware of", and I hate to break it to you, but people HAVE gotten into legal entanglements because of cell phones going off, and there's various levels of anal-retentiveness surrounding cel-phones and driving....

Think first, then post, it'll make you seem a lot smarter.

Re:No, YOU are a fucking idiot

[Lars T.]

Radio - doesn't just spontaneously make noise after being silent. The driver of a car generally knows his radio is on and isn't distracted by it.

Many car radios in germany have a feature that recognizes when there is traffic information on a (user-) selected station, and automatically turn the volume up and switch to that station (if you listen to a different one or tape or CD). When the info is over, things go back to what they were before. Some background info

So if a driver doesn't know his radio better than his nav system (actually even then), he could be quite irritatet by both. It certainly anoyed me a couple of times, when the radio began yelling traffic info at me.

Re:On Road Spam

[Tackhead]

> If I had a car that could use the Onstar system, I would deliberately tell them that I would not want spam, or else to cancel the account before I drove the car through the show room window

I think you have the order reversed.

If I had a car with OnStar and got spammed, I'd drive it through the showroom window first (hopefully crushing a cute baby or pregnant woman to death in the process), and then sue the bejeezus out of GM and the advertiser on the grounds that the spam distracted me. A few billion dollars in damages will shut these pigfucking marketroids down pronto, or at least convince potential advertisers to stay the fuck out of my car.

Surely if it's illegal for me to distract myself with a cell phone, but it ought to be just as illegal for my car manufacturer to distract me with spam, no? (That's why I hope there's a preggo or sprog in the showroom when I hit it, it'll spur the congresscritters to stop the advertising in our cars, "for the chilllllllldrun!" With any luck, I can get the next-of-kin to join me as plaintiffs in the suit!)