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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."
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.
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?
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!!!
1) This will be part of the "infotainment" system obviously. Have the system do a systems check and refuse to operate any of the display screen functions (radio, navigation etc) unless the system passes all checks.
2) The cell radio is also crucial to things like On-Star, so cooperate with the big insurance companies to make a disabled system more expensive to insure. On the basis that On-Star and automatic collision reporting are "vital safety systems"
3) Many cars now have a "limp home mode" where the vehicle will still operate, but with severely reduced performance. This is intended for things like emissions systems failures, engine computer failure and so on. It would be obvious and straight forward to have a car go into limp home mode if any of the many computers, logic controllers or other electronic parts fail the self check.
4) The easiest and most legally defensible, simply have the check engine or service engine light come on when the self check fails.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
I don't even want my smartphone cloud-enabled. If it dies and loses its data, it's my fault for not backing it up. I'd rather know it's me in charge of my devices than some faceless corporation
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
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.