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
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.
Telenav is betting you won't mind much
I'll take that bet.
Me too. Especially after insurance companies realize they can compel release of this data to dispute coverage or increase rates.
For example: You go through drive-through every morning - you must be eating breakfast while driving to work. This leads to distracted driving. Congratulations! You win 20% higher premium.
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.
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.
...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.
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!!!
I'm reminded of the OBD devices some insurance companies offer so you have a discount. I tried that, but because I commute on a busy highway (I-35 in Austin), coupled with cretins who swing in a lane, freak out because traffic is stopped, then slam the brakes on, forcing me to do 60-0s fast, no matter how much following distance I leave that gets logged... My premiums went up by 25%, so I switched insurance companies.
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.
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.
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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.
Me too. Especially after insurance companies realize they can compel release of this data to dispute coverage or increase rates.
For example: You go through drive-through every morning - you must be eating breakfast while driving to work. This leads to distracted driving. Congratulations! You win 20% higher premium.
Even better: "Congratulations! You bought a car with a built-in distraction device! You win a 20% higher premium!"
Congratulations! You win 20% higher premium.
This is a small overshoot in a good trend. The higher premium may make you to skip the breakfast in paper wrapper in the drive through in the morning. Your insurance rate will go down. You'll also be healthier. Your health insurance rate will go down.
Seriously what world do we live in where people eat in their cars.
And I'm betting there will be class-action lawsuits if this really does happen. In what possible way does buying a car grant a third part the right to collect and sell any data gathered from it? Ignoring the privacy implications - the data is not theirs to take! I genuinely don't understand the mentality behind these sociopathic advertising asshats which makes them think they have any sort of right to do something like this.
If they want to install this bullshit in the car then they had better give owners the ability to shut it completely off. I only hope that whatever judge this ends up in front of is a rational person and not some right wing nut who just wants to fuck over the American public and hand them over to his corporate overlords.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Telenav is betting you won't mind much
I'll take that bet.
No kidding. I will never buy a car that serves me ads. I'd debate driving one even for free. Any manufacturer that ops into this will lose me as a customer, too, even if the car I wanted didn't have the ads (yet).)
I don't know, but it works for me.
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...
you must be eating breakfast while driving
False assumption. Could be buying food to eat at work, could be buying a drink, could be flirting with the staff, could get lost on the way to work every day and pull in for directions, could be a Russian spy attending a dead-drop to exchange messages with the FBI.
Luckily insurance companies have intelligent people working for them and wont be that bloody silly. To go with your assumption, I mean.