Slashdot Mirror
The Car of the Future Will Sell Your Data (bloomberg.com)
Picture this: You're driving home from work, contemplating what to make for dinner, and as you idle at a red light near your neighborhood pizzeria, an ad offering $5 off a pepperoni pie pops up on your dashboard screen. Are you annoyed that your car's trying to sell you something, or pleasantly persuaded? From a report: Telenav, a company developing in-car advertising software, is betting you won't mind much. Car companies -- looking to earn some extra money -- hope so, too. Automakers have been installing wireless connections in vehicles and collecting data for decades. But the sheer volume of software and sensors in new vehicles, combined with artificial intelligence that can sift through data at ever-quickening speeds, means new services and revenue streams are quickly emerging. The big question for automakers now is whether they can profit off all the driver data they're capable of collecting without alienating consumers or risking backlash from Washington. "Carmakers recognize they're fighting a war over customer data," said Roger Lanctot, who works with automakers on data monetization as a consultant for Strategy Analytics. "Your driving behavior, location, has monetary value, not unlike your search activity."
But here in the UK we have strict regulations on distractions whilst driving. That's the same reason the billboard isn't a thing here in the UK.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Telenav is betting you won't mind much
I'll take that bet.
So now ad blockers and no script will be needed for a new car?
The more a car networks and spies on its users, the more car privacy tools will be needed.
Recall unsafe at any speed?
The car brand will be unsafe on any network. The Designed-In Data Trade of the Networked American Automobile
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This in car advertising feature will be non-starer for me. I will avoid buying cars equipped with one, if all cars go this way I will pull the fuse on infotaiment system.
One aspect people fail to consider is that if your car reports your location to advertisers, it also can be compelled to report your location to law enforcement, creditors, lawyers.
THe time for the pizza coupon is 15-20 minutes out from the pizza shop so you can order on your cell/smart phone and then pick it up rather than pulling over, ordering, and then sitting and waiting for the pizza.
Altho personally I find all this advertising abhorrent and am sick to death of constanly being advertised to. I tend to take the more annoying ads as as example of who NOT to do business with.
Everything in the future will sell your data. All companies are already looking at user data as cash cows. Chuck in a few lines in the ToS and you're good to go selling customers' data.
Can we please just keep making cars that have NO built-in screens? If and when I need a navigator, I'll mount my phone, but I generally don't need a bright glowing rectangle blowing out my night vision.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
When I was a kid it seemed like it had so much promise. Nowadays it's just pretty much advertising.
They log your locations, acceleration/deceleration data. Every time you bring your vehicle for routine maintenance, some of that data gets copied during service.
I'll spoof the data.
Expect my Cars GPS to show me driving on the Nascar track, 24x7.
Higher insurance rates?
Prove that's *MY* car going 200km/hr+ on the track. I've got video showing it's NOT me.
I will avoid buying cars equipped with one, if all cars go this way I will pull the fuse on infotaiment system.
Which in all likelihood will result in a car that does not start. I work with these sorts of system in my day job because my company provides wiring for them. These are (generally speaking) not well designed modular systems that can be easily disabled piecemeal. Car companies have virtually zero concept of modularity or security and all the systems tend to be tied into all the others WAY too closely. CAN bus is a hot mess. The way wiring is done in most vehicles would make the head of most slashdot readers explode with rage. It's the most scatterbrained ad-hoc thing you can imagine.
We just did a set of harnesses for a vehicle being prototyped right now and the notion that you could disable the infotainment system on that vehicle with no further problems is laughable. You'd basically have to reprogram the whole thing and possibly replace a lot of the ECUs which for all practical purposes would be nigh impossible.
One aspect people fail to consider is that if your car reports your location to advertisers, it also can be compelled to report your location to law enforcement, creditors, lawyers.
Yep. Scary ain't it?
If you're using a Google or an Apple product, you are already giving away all of your data anyway. Gmail users give it away to save $2/month on real email. Apple users give it away for shiny shiny marketing. Facebook users give it away for god knows what. 99.99% of all people, at least in the US, have already voluntarily given one of these three big companies all of their information, anyway. It's all over. People are too fucking stupid and/or lazy.
I don't respond to AC's.
Can we please just keep making cars that have NO built-in screens?
Short answer? Probably not. Not in the long run anyway. The cost savings from doing as much as possible with a touch screen are probably going to overwhelm any other options not required by law. This despite the fact that touch screens are a terrible interface for many things.
If and when I need a navigator, I'll mount my phone, but I generally don't need a bright glowing rectangle blowing out my night vision.
Since that doesn't really happen I'm not sure what your complaint there is. I can turn the screen off in my truck if I want to but even when it is on it isn't all that bright unless I want it to be.
The car of the future will drive by itself while I'll have my AR-Goggles and my headphones on, so they can show whatever the fuck they want.
...I will not drive. Or at least not own. I'll take public transit, a taxi or some "ride-sharing" (stupid name) service, walk, or cycle. In cases that I really need to drive, I'll rent or use a car-sharing service, which will rather limit the amount of data that can be collected from me in that context.
Note to car manufacturers: sell me a car that drives from point A to point B efficiently. Make a profit doing that. If you can't, then gtfo.
But as a car guy and an electronics nerd then i cant wait for my new business to flourish! I will be offering my services to remove all connectivity from these cars of the future. And before anyone says that i wont be able to do it, I use the argument that there are roads that go many places where there isn't connectivity. Therefor the lack of connectivity must be a failure mode that manufacturers must build into their systems, no one wants a car that stops working when the communication system doesn't exist or fails completely. It might be as simple as disconnecting an antenna or pulling an entire module and replacing it with a CAN bus spoofer (which is really just a raspberry pi or arduino and some R&D). the can bus protocol is not that hard to decode in cars and realistically automotive manufacturers suck at security so as long as i have access to the hardware it shouldn't be too hard and will be worth the cost to the right people.
I get the feeling that most of my customers will be of the unsavory types who do nefarious things, but that doesn't bother me as they are no less of a person than the people who are trying to collect all of that data and use it to control the masses. The cat and mouse game will continue until the cat(corporation) gives up or all of the mice(those of us who value our privacy) are dead.
Waze has been doing this for some time, but only when I stop at red lights. As soon as I move the ad goes away.
I guess automakers would like a slice of the pie. I only wish they would be as self-constrained...
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
I see more and more of this coming up in the industry and it opens a question for me - who owns the car?
It may make a difference if the car is leased. But thinking about how Tesla batteries software limited capacity/range - if I buy the car with a giant battery in it cannot I not defeat that?
Or is it like Sat radio - where I have to have a subscription to continue using it? Is the "fuel" in my car available only through subscription? What prevents me from strapping a bigger battery to my roof and plugging it in through the charge-port (ala battery packs for cell phones).
So the car manufacture is going to install advertising software in my car? And may I defeat it or otherwise alter the vehicle as I see fit. And perform repairs on it too!!!
Seriously, what did you think were all those coloured lights in Blade Runner?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
If I ever buy this car I will have to kick my own ass. It's the right thing to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We'll make great pets
284,000 miles and still going strong.
It will not be possible to just disable the display. Cars already come with a single display that integrates many functions like GPS, climate control, entertainment, maintenance. No way to just shut it off.
to 40 years of declining wages. My 1994 Accord is completely untraceable. Even if you bolt something onto it the constant vibrations from the knocking engine and iffy transmission are just going to make it fall off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Given sticker price of vehicles I can't imagine it taking all that much more than a few people walking off the lot in disgust before dealers demanded change.
Seems people are a lot more tolerant of advertising, if they get something from it. You can advertise on TV or in magazines with only minor complaints, because you're helping fund the medium. Even then, people are cutting the cord because they prefer streaming services that don't.
Telenav suggests $30 annually per vehicle. Personally, even if all that goes into driver perks, I don't think an effective $300 reduction over a 10 year car lifetime is going to persuade many people to accept this feature.
This sort of crap is exactly why 1. I'm really glad that legislation like the GDPR in the EU is coming along to begin to allow us to take control of our data. Might not be perfect but a good start. As I read it, this wouldn't be allowed without explicit consent between the owner of the car and whatever advertising company ran this (burying it in an EULA doesn't count)
but simultaneously I'm 2. really annoyed that my dipshit government and uninformed co-citizens voted to take my country out of the EU :-( at least we'll get a few years of the GDPR to see how that works out.
C17H21NO4
And we discussed it a month ago. Onstar in fact has been doing this for a decade even if you aren't a subscriber.
you provide wiring, you do not actually see the work being done witin the modules.
Sigh.... Actually I do see quite a lot of it because we don't just do the wiring but thank's for the insult. We also do a lot of engineering for the ECUs and for several of our customers we provide program management for the entire electrical system of a vehicle. But you go ahead with being condescending to someone you know nothing about.
So your opinions on the wiring hold weight but I can tell that you have no idea how the modules actually send packets and interact on the network
Since I've told you virtually nothing beyond the fact that my company makes wiring products that's quite a leap you made there. Maybe you should find out what I actually do before telling me what I know?
Anyways, your defeatist attitude is mostlikely because you do not understand how canbus actually works on the protocol layer as yopu are only exposed to the physical wiring layer. I can tell you that removing and/or reprogramming modules from a car is not impossible and is already done.
Defeatist? Not at all. Just realist. I know exactly what is involved, how hard it is, and how expensive because I'd done it. If you think it is trivial you either lack perspective or you are utterly clueless because you've never really done it. I also know how ad hoc much of the programming that goes into a lot of it is because I work directly with the engineers doing it.
I am already replacing certain modules in high end cars and replacing them with small SOC's that talk on the canbus, it is not impossible it just takes time and effort.
It is impossible for most people. Yes you can reprogram all this stuff. Doing so is expensive, time consuming and requires specific technical expertise. You aren't going to get a CANbus for Dummies book from Amazon and start reprogramming ECUs over a weekend. You can hire people to do it for you but they don't come cheap.
You may work for an automotive supplier, but that doesn't mean that you understand automotive engineering.
Really? Glad you set me straight. I thought the fact that I AM automotive engineer with over 20 years in the industry might have given me some insight but clearly an AC on slashdot knows all.
Fuck them fuck them and fuck them some more. That shit has no right to be there distracting and killing people. And the privacy issues are 10 times worse than browsing. Even the government might have enough sense to block this shit.
I would drive right to the dealer and return it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I was born a free citizen.
Then I was a consumer.
Today, I'm a product. [1]
[1] And somehow, a bad guy now by default of my demographics. Perhaps that makes me a better product, or, more likely, it makes other products more valuable to the "store" selling them.
Check your premises.
Fixed title.
Check your premises.
Waze already does this shit.
No I do not want to go to the goddamn donut shop, you retarded fucking robot. I just want to get home.
This is the level of ethics that advertisers have. Block them all the time, everywhere. They are absolute scum.
If a site fails to make ad revenue, it is not my problem, blame the scamming scum advertisers.
We even helped block them in real life in my city. A new zoning regulation bans all light up LED billboards.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Here's why I remain skeptical about conspiracies around this:
I've been an active Facebook user since 2010. I probably post 2 or 3 times per day. Facebook knows where I live, what I like, how old I am, who my friends are, what my politics are, what TV shows and movies I like, where I've travelled, what airlines I fly... On and on.
I don't run ad blockers.
Nevertheless, in eight years, other than the odd T-Shirt company, Facebook has never once served up an ad for something I'm interested in. Never. Once. They have no clue. All they do is serve up ads for things I've already searched elsewhere, like Timberland shoes or random nonsense they think a 50-year-old male might be interested in.
My Android phone knows everywhere I go. Again, nothing I'm interested in. Nothing.
Ditto Twitter.
I'm not going to stress about this until one day I truly have a Keanu "whoa" moment. And that hasn't happened yet...
I really despise aggressive marketing. If Telenav is betting that carowners wouldn't object, they are very very wrong. I eliminated cable TV and broadcast radio since 2000 because the advertising was getting more and more intrusive. I stopped purchasing fuel at gas stations where the screens on the pumps are blasting advertisements at loud volume. I stopped visiting websites with highly intrusive ads. The last thing I want in my car is a damn billboard on my dashboard.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
There's no way in hell I'd tolerate any of this shit in any vehicle I owned.
o Radio
o Climate control
o Maybe electric door locks and electric windows
o Intermittent wipers
o Cruise control
o Preferably a light pickup truck, with a stick-shift
That's all I need in a vehicle. It's transportation, not a lifestyle choice.
Maybe if more people stopped thinking of it as a lifestyle choice and more like transportation, paid attention to the road and being a decent driver, we wouldn't have many of the problems we currently have -- and wouldn't need self-driving cars, either.
Free! Just sign this agreement allowing all your information to be harvested and sold.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...How can you sell MY data when I haven't driven since 1993? And you kids wonder why I don't own a car.
"The truth points to itself." - Kosh, Babylon5
We have detected a significant spring sag on your driver's side. How about skipping that pizza and stopping by the gym?
Have gnu, will travel.
This is how it's done. Nice job, Telenav. You're paving that yellow brick road to the emerald city that is the death of advertising. We'll all click our heels and be back to rural, disconnected, black-and-white Kansas in no time. People will be leaving the Internet and all sorts of media outlets after this move. We'll wake up and realize there's a world around us and then perhaps small businesses will flourish.
I don't mind picking up "nearby" advertising, but don't want people knowing I, myself, am driving by.
I don't really care, but don't want that info feeding into a government panopticon which can be used without a warrant.
BTW, it currently is as there are companies which install cams and face and license plate readers for cities, with an agreement it all gets fed into a national database they then feed to, I wonder who...?
And you can request live tracking from it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And take your obnoxious ad things with you.
The car won't know if that person in the passenger seat is your wife, mistress, child, a co-worker or a friend and the types of ads it serves could reveal things about you as well.
1) In this day and age were Netflix exists and we are watching TV without commercials, Netflix has figure it out and is adding more and more TV shows, one can assume we are extremely tired of all the commercials. I have Netflix's for that very reason NO commercials. There is no-way in hell I am buying a car with commercials on a screen! I can't stand the commercials now, 80% of them are for something I don't want and 15% are for something I don't need and the leftover, well maybe. 2) I agree with the other comments isn't this a driving distraction? We have cell phone laws that prohibit looking at the screen, but now it is OK to look at my screen because it is built into the car?? 3) Does everyone remember when Samsung did this to their TVs??? It was about 4 years ago all their smart TVs started displaying text based commercials with no way to turn them off. There was such a public outrage that 3 months later there was a hidden way to turn them off if you call support. Then 6 months later there was an option to turn it off and now the options does not exist (or at least on my TVs the option is completely gone). These text commercials were extremely annoying and always popping up at the most annoying times. Worst 3 months of watching TV!
Do they believe what they say? This guy would like to drive a car like that himself? Really?
And what is worse, they manage to sell this idea and it get mass adapted, because everybody thinks it is awesome?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
So you've just been to the Gym. The car knows that because it took you there. So on the way home you could see an advertisement for Smoothie King, McDonalds, etc. Just imagine it - "You've worked out hard. Looks like you've been at it for an hour. Make sure you're hydrated and replenish your fluids, stop at smoothie king, just 1 mile ahead on the right." This is on your HUD. What? You don't have a HUD in your car yet?