If your car connects to the internet, what personal data could it be sharing – and even selling? A new report on Australia’s 15 most popular car brands reveals these privacy concerns.

New research reveals serious privacy flaws in the data practices of new internet connected cars in Australia. It’s yet another reason why we need urgent reform of privacy laws.

Modern cars are increasingly equipped with internet-enabled features. Your “connected car” might automatically detect an accident and call emergency services, or send a notification if a child is left in the back seat.

But connected cars are also sophisticated surveillance devices. The data they collect can create a highly revealing picture of each driver. If this data is misused, it can result in privacy and security threats.

A report published today analysed the privacy terms from 15 of the most popular new car brands that sell connected cars in Australia.

    • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
      12·
      23 days ago

      The car has its own power generation though so it can do a lot more without risk of killing the battery. They can record and stream the whole time you use it.

    • JustVik@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      22 days ago

      You can turn off your phone at least sometimes. :) But this of course does not solve the problem.

      • Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml
        71·
        23 days ago

        Just what I said. Your phone is watching you and listening to you. If you are driving with it on you are being tracked as well

        • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
          15·
          23 days ago

          Not if you install a custom rom like graphene os. Or turn off all privacy invasive features in the settings.

          • electricprism@lemmy.ml
            12·
            23 days ago

            I find it hard to believe that Google phones wouldn’t have a hardware±SIM backdoor no matter what ROM is installed.

            This technology already was in place on Intel ME desktops using a operating system on a chip called MINIX

            That and phones far exceed surveillance perfection and device count vs PC.

            Anything not RISCV and with a binary blob is a vector.

            • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
              4·
              22 days ago

              You may or may not be right but it’s still very beneficial to install a custom rom or disable as many privacy invasive settings as possible because it will definitely at least significantly limit the amount of data google gets and its definitely better than giving up and doing nothing.

              I honestly believe that Google doesn’t have any back-door into your device anyway.

          • Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml
            4·
            23 days ago

            Am using vanilla android 14 and have disable as much tracking software as I can find in it. I truly believe there is tracking code embedded in the os. But since I still owe on this phone from my service I’m not real comfortable rooting and flashing it right now. Looked at a couple "topten list"s of available Roms and the grapheneos was advertised as pixel only. My samsung doesnt fit so…

            I like minimalist stuff anyway so went to download the OmniRom but was warned it “may not be compatible with your device” and was prevented from downloading. Just have to wait till this one is paid off before dinking around with it.

            • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
              3·
              22 days ago

              Yeah I have a samsung too it sucks that they have basicly no suport for custom roms unless you go with something really old like the galaxy s10.

      • AtariDump@lemmy.world
        3·
        23 days ago

        The point is people hyper focus on one thing while completely disregarding / forgetting something that as bad or worse.