Information and China - Geely and spyware? What's the chances it does not report?

[~el~jefe~]

What is the chance that a Chinese company installing software that hooks up to their systems is not spying and getting cough cough "metadata"?

Many will jump on this and defend someone they do not know, white knighting is a hobby of forums for years.
I am noticing the lack of analog anything in the vehicle. They could have afforded to put attractive gauges in the dash. It would have given them a lot of design points from reviewers and fans. "digital gauge clusters" aka, $50 dollar screens, and then another ill conceived capacitive year 2010 designed $70 tablet as a center control, just wreaks of pre-electric car company from Asia psychopathy.

Does anyone have any knowledge of privacy information yet and these devices? I am attempting to figure out Porsche 718's level of privacy. It seems quite respectful and low-tech.

this might be paranoia, but hey, google, android phones, alexa, and tik tok are a thing right?

 

[kitkat]

If that sort of privacy is a requirement for you, find the sim card and remove it or clip the LTE antenna.

Alternatively, just buy the Porsche instead.

 

[GetawayDriving]

Have we even confirmed that this car has an LTE connection? My working assumption was that it didn’t, which would make all of this a moot point.

 

[wallstbear]

What is the chance that a Chinese company installing software that hooks up to their systems is not spying and getting cough cough "metadata"?

Many will jump on this and defend someone they do not know, white knighting is a hobby of forums for years.
I am noticing the lack of analog anything in the vehicle. They could have afforded to put attractive gauges in the dash. It would have given them a lot of design points from reviewers and fans. "digital gauge clusters" aka, $50 dollar screens, and then another ill conceived capacitive year 2010 designed $70 tablet as a center control, just wreaks of pre-electric car company from Asia psychopathy.

Does anyone have any knowledge of privacy information yet and these devices? I am attempting to figure out Porsche 718's level of privacy. It seems quite respectful and low-tech.

this might be paranoia, but hey, google, android phones, alexa, and tik tok are a thing right?

My initial response was: oh, f*ck, if the folks at Lotus have to install software that meet their Chinese shareholder's government's requirements, they are going to delay the delivery dates to mid-2023 for sure?

 

[GetawayDriving]

What is the chance that a Chinese company installing software that hooks up to their systems is not spying and getting cough cough "metadata"?

Many will jump on this and defend someone they do not know, white knighting is a hobby of forums for years.
I am noticing the lack of analog anything in the vehicle. They could have afforded to put attractive gauges in the dash. It would have given them a lot of design points from reviewers and fans. "digital gauge clusters" aka, $50 dollar screens, and then another ill conceived capacitive year 2010 designed $70 tablet as a center control, just wreaks of pre-electric car company from Asia psychopathy.

Does anyone have any knowledge of privacy information yet and these devices? I am attempting to figure out Porsche 718's level of privacy. It seems quite respectful and low-tech.

this might be paranoia, but hey, google, android phones, alexa, and tik tok are a thing right?

Let’s assume the worst and that this car was conceived from the ground up to be a spyware device. What data could they possibly receive?

My GPS search history and current geolocation

Fair play on this, I suppose they know where I drive my sports car. Which isn’t very many places to be honest. It’s not terribly useful as a spying tool when it’s not my daily but I suppose this is the area with the most sensitivity. They might figure out how addicted I am to coffee.

My Spotify preferences

Ok, so they might analyze my playlists and presume a mild depression. Maybe they’ll extort me for that time Taylor Swift came on and I didn’t switch it. The most dystopian thing I can think of is gleening my political leanings from the podcasts that I listen to.

Telemetry data

No hiding when I miss a rev match, that’s embarrassing. I guess they’ll know if I exceed the speed limit or if I track the car. Maybe they’ll sell that data to my insurance company. That would be a drag.

Hot mic

Tumbling fully down the rabbit hole, let’s assume they’re listening. Full audio streaming upload with speech recognition and keyword tagging, a whole searchable history of my conversations. That’s a lot of effort to receive a profile of passive aggressive what-do-you-want-for-dinner arguments with my girlfriend. I guess I’ll counter this by redlining the engine all the time. Can you hear me now?

I guess my point is, we should all be worried about privacy but within reason. This car isn’t a terribly good collection device and so I’m just not going to worry myself about it. Honestly I’d be more concerned about a site like this than anything the car is able to collect from us.

 

[Mctaff]

Don’t forget - lotus nerd congregation hotspots.

😄

 

[Autopsy]

Well my initial thought was these are some racist points you have but hey, teslas are prohibited from entering both Chinese governmental facilities and German police stations due to sentry mode concerns. Plus all the media rendering China as the world’s villain so I see where you came from.

As GetAwayDriving puts perfectly, there isn’t much to be gathered with a relatively low tech low volume sports car.

Also with so many British employee (and Swedes in case of Volvo and polestar) if they indeed want data on your favorite driving roads chance of these surveillance programs not leaking are very slim. I bet you’ll see front page coverage on all your major news outlets by then.

Plus we don’t event know if it comes with a SIM card at all. If it does you can simply disable it to achieve peace of mind from pesky Chineses.

 

[emiraspain]

Not that I am worried at all by it, but I think the volume car in lotus's near future is the Eletre and that for sure will have much more capability to collect data and yes, data is power and following the recent CIB/MI7 joint release regarding china, well I can understand your worry, "racist" or not, Im not even going to go there. However, for the Emira I think it really is a mute point.
Having said that, if anyone, US, UK, CHina, India, even jersey... were clever enough, you would think upon connecting your iphone/samsung to the car, it would be theoretically possible to get a lot more than just your taste in music or the last time you raised your voice. however, we assume the guys at apple are also clever and prevent this from being possible, BUT one day..........

 

[GetawayDriving]

however, we assume the guys at apple are also clever and prevent this from being possible, BUT one day..........

I presume this to be the case, but if anyone has clarity around automotive software integrations I’m all ears.

As I understand it, CarPlay and Android Auto are mirroring apps. There should be no data passed to the car, everything is contained within the usage of the phone.

With that said, Apple showed us a much deeper integration of CarPlay at WWDC and I don’t think anyone outside of 1 Infinite Loop is aware of how that works in practice yet.

I do have potentially misplaced trust in Apple to guard my privacy here, I suspect THEY see privacy from snooping smart cars as a key reason a user might want to use a wider implementation of CarPlay, but now I’m making marketing Assumptions in addition to technical assumptions. In terms of the Emira this is all still pretty moot.

 

[ADC]

Just wrap the whole car in aluminium foil. Problem solved.

 

[kitkat]

Just wrap the whole car in aluminium foil. Problem solved.

Done.

 

[Leonard]

At this point in time does anyone care about their data being used?
Pretty sure folk are so lazy now that they accept it for pure convenience

 

[vision]

At this point in time does anyone care about their data being used?
Pretty sure folk are so lazy now that they accept it for pure convenience

Ive given up, what an Iphoneeything and I'm not having androids in my car. god I'm bored

 

[ADC]

View attachment 7533

Done.

You missed the windows, bruh. That's how the informations escape!

 

[Squidsworth Jr.]

Let’s assume the worst and that this car was conceived from the ground up to be a spyware device. What data could they possibly receive?

My GPS search history and current geolocation

Fair play on this, I suppose they know where I drive my sports car. Which isn’t very many places to be honest. It’s not terribly useful as a spying tool when it’s not my daily but I suppose this is the area with the most sensitivity. They might figure out how addicted I am to coffee.

My Spotify preferences

Ok, so they might analyze my playlists and presume a mild depression. Maybe they’ll extort me for that time Taylor Swift came on and I didn’t switch it. The most dystopian thing I can think of is gleening my political leanings from the podcasts that I listen to.

Telemetry data

No hiding when I miss a rev match, that’s embarrassing. I guess they’ll know if I exceed the speed limit or if I track the car. Maybe they’ll sell that data to my insurance company. That would be a drag.

Hot mic

Tumbling fully down the rabbit hole, let’s assume they’re listening. Full audio streaming upload with speech recognition and keyword tagging, a whole searchable history of my conversations. That’s a lot of effort to receive a profile of passive aggressive what-do-you-want-for-dinner arguments with my girlfriend. I guess I’ll counter this by redlining the engine all the time. Can you hear me now?

I guess my point is, we should all be worried about privacy but within reason. This car isn’t a terribly good collection device and so I’m just not going to worry myself about it. Honestly I’d be more concerned about a site like this than anything the car is able to collect from us.

They'll have one more data point, which is whatever they can grab from your phone when you connect. So contact list, messaging history, browsing history, account passwords maybe? Not sure how much they can actually get there, but my fiancée works in Cybersecurity, specifically nation state cyber attack forensics, and she refuses to let anything built by China to sync with her phone. Her line of work probably makes her a bit paranoid there, but then it's all paranoia until an effective attack actually happens...

 

[Eagle7]

They'll have one more data point, which is whatever they can grab from your phone when you connect. So contact list, messaging history, browsing history, account passwords maybe? Not sure how much they can actually get there, but my fiancée works in Cybersecurity, specifically nation state cyber attack forensics, and she refuses to let anything built by China to sync with her phone. Her line of work probably makes her a bit paranoid there, but then it's all paranoia until an effective attack actually happens...

I know. I remember not too long ago how people who voiced concerns were laughed at and mocked with tin-foil hat memes for thinking governments could spy on them through their cell phones and webcams, then there were pictures of Bill Gates and Zuckerberg at their laptops and they both had tape across their webcams. Not too long after that it came up that the FBI could in fact turn on computer webcams remotely, and do so without the light coming on to tell you it was on, AND... they'd been doing that.

If you want to know what is or isn't an issue, watch what the people at the top do or don't do. That'll tell you more than any media report.

 

[GetawayDriving]

They'll have one more data point, which is whatever they can grab from your phone when you connect. So contact list, messaging history, browsing history, account passwords maybe? Not sure how much they can actually get there, but my fiancée works in Cybersecurity, specifically nation state cyber attack forensics, and she refuses to let anything built by China to sync with her phone. Her line of work probably makes her a bit paranoid there, but then it's all paranoia until an effective attack actually happens...

That’s assuming you connect via Bluetooth with the car’s infotainment. CarPlay / Android Auto are mirrors that control the phone but do not pass data to the car. You don’t need to use Bluetooth at all if using CarPlay / AA.

 

[kitkat]

*throws a grenade into this thread*

Security flaws in GPS tracker exposing 1M vehicle locations

Researchers warn that the flaws can be exploited to track vehicles and remotely cut engines

techcrunch.com

 

[frazzer]

Mass surveillance is already a thing, and China, though more invasive, pervasive and less clandestine about it certainly does not have a monopoly.

 

[ksegg]

Privacy is dead for the most part. The only way to have total privacy is to live in a tent in the woods and be completely off the grid. No phone, credit cards, car, house, etc.

I use a VPN for everything I use and even then.....I don't think having a VPN is completely secure.

Anything and everything electronic that sends and receives a signal can be (and mostly likely is) tracked.

So yeah, Geely can know I like to late brake and shift to 2nd pretty aggressively.