Mozilla: It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy

Posted Sep 6, 2023 18:05 UTC (Wed) by nickodell (subscriber, #125165)
In reply to: Mozilla: It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy by dskoll
Parent article: Mozilla: It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy

Perhaps not, but a trend I've seen becoming more common is cars having built-in entertainment systems with access to streaming services. For example, a friend's car can play Spotify. That means that his car has an internet connected computer. It does not seem very far fetched that it could have a connection to the vehicle's CAN bus, and read off the vehicle's acceleration/speed. I'm not saying that manufacturers are currently doing this, but it's a little disturbing they've reserved the right to do so.

Mozilla: It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy

Posted Sep 6, 2023 18:27 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The factory system in my 2011 car, while not having Internet connectivity, can get current engine revs, vehicle speed, gear, and direction of travel from CAN to help with navigation and with automatic volume control (turning the volume up a little as the car gets noisier to make the perceived volume more consistent. I would be surprised if a modern vehicle gets less data from CAN.

Mozilla: It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy

Posted Sep 11, 2023 12:40 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

Entertainment head-end systems can read from the CAN bus to implement adaptive volume control that accounts for road noise based on speed. Some cars have multiple CAN bus for different security levels with a firewall/proxy/bridge in between, so low security systems like the entertainment system don't have write access to critical data like ABS brakes or engine timing.