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Rookie Dongle Warns Parents When Their Kids Are Driving Too Fast (thestack.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the always-watching dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Dongle Apps, a Belgian tech company, has introduced a new system which alerts a car owner if the vehicle's driver is breaking the speed limit. Initially designed for parents and guardians to keep an eye on their young ones behind the wheel, the 'Rookie Dongle', connects to the vehicle's on-board diagnostics (OBD II) port, internal GPS and mobile technologies to push real-time data to the cloud and send notifications to car owners via email or text when the driver is speeding, suddenly accelerates, brakes hard or has high RPM levels.

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Are these sponsored stories? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They keep saying submitted by "anonymous" and include a link in the title bar to the front page of the site that is hosting the article. Bullshit detector is going off full blast right now.

    1. Re: Are these sponsored stories? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One should never, ever, for any reason allow telemetry data to be uploaded to anywhere. Even if it isn't sold to insurance companies (and the notion of them geting their slimy hands on it is bad enough), you should never subject yourself or your family to the pile of trouble this can cause in case of an accident.

      So your kid drives imperfectly. Who doesn't? Then maybe gets into a wreck. You now have a legally discoverable trail of evidence that can be made to show whatever the other party wants to. That your kid drove imperfectly in the past and you did nothing about it would be a good place for them to start.

      Never keep records you don't have to keep, and never help anyone sue you.

  2. Love it! by bwwatr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's condition our kids to expect systemic surveillance from early on, and teach them about trust by demonstrating a complete lack of it ourselves.

  3. Great. Another internet-to-CANbus bridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The OBD-II port allows access to the life-safety systems of the car. It is a private unsecured network that performs no authentication.

    These dongles allow arbitrary access to the car bus, limited only by their buggy software. They shouldn't even be manufactured.