I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.

Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the fields in the request was current mileage. I entered an estimate like 75000 miles. On form submission, that field failed validation with red subtext along the lines of 'this is less than the last reported mileage of 75345, reported <5 or so days prior>'. Checking my odometer and looking at my past few days' trips, that was indeed accurate.

The car hadn't been to a shop or out of my possession in weeks, so I can only assume the telemetry was still dialing home and selling to third parties despite my best efforts to disable it.

In my understanding, this pretty much makes this type of driver data illegal to sell or share. CalPrivacy's enforcement division has their eye on connected car manufacturers already, so we'll see what they do with that.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.x...

Obviously it would be better to have this action be illegal. But with legal privacy protections eroding in the US and other countries, it seems prudent to have a better understanding of the systems involved in the immoral surveillance.

And there are technological "advances" I would very much like to undo. One of them being social media, another being modern cars. Automobiles peaked when they were purely mechanical. An average American high schooler could understand all its systems, and many did. When they started becoming LANs on wheels beginning in the 90s, they became necessary millstones around their owners' necks, and these days they're as inscrutable as a smartphone, just as user-hostile, and just as tethered to vendor services. I think my father was speaking from a place of wisdom when he groused about computers in automobiles.

And no, EVs are actually simpler than ICE engines, their drivetrain being basically a battery, a set of electric motors, and maybe some variable resistors to control speed. An EV that is purely electromechanical and operable via analog controls would be a godsend, but it's not going to happen under current regulatory environments.

Facts about the car: VIN, spec, recall status, odometer. Attested by someone other than the owner. Outlives every owner and the owner is the last to have it, if at all.

Facts about the driver: speed, location, timestamp. Thats what GM sold, the fix is to not collect it but OEMs seem to take 'anonymization' approach.

The DRIVER act treats both as the same which is why it fails to fix anything. The second needs a ban. The first needs the opposite - especially as we take the driver out of the vehicle - an authoritative record of the vehicle. How do we expect AVs to have adoption when the only safety certification is the company's press release?

third-party partners process information about you and how you use our services, including clicks and screen recordings, using first and third-party cookies, pixels, and similar technologies

It's still better than other modern cars though? I think.

Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?

https://smackernews.com/item/47967786 HN

The only data we need is if you’re at home and the charging metrics /w commands.

But the amount of unnecessary data that is available, is a real privacy concern.

This is why I'm a vocal advocate for having an LLC own any vehicles you might drive. It protects you from the license-plate reading lookup as well from Flock et all. Though I don't know it guarantees you can't be looked up by insurance it's resistance by one more bit of friction. The vehicle I drive now is an old 2012 Lexus owned by Montana LLC and it also has no smart technology and very little insurance costs.

Privacy NoticeWe and our 179 partners store and access personal data.

Fair to say the verge don't really care about data being collected and sold they just want the clicks

We need a solution, not a Band-Aid like the "Freedom Car Act." I believe that legislators are deliberately coming up with legislation that mildly hinders, but in no way resolves the issue in order to keep their sugar-daddies freewheeling.

https://youtu.be/Ft12aZffCEg?si=qP1J5k6RXAxmZChf

https://youtu.be/SeMZGICNSMg?si=-YLnt5Q477xpFbra

https://youtu.be/8Kp108x4tQA?si=j7JV-_Dpl5afP99F

I'm going to pirate shit until this is fixed.

Fuck you, data leeches ... you'll get nothing from me.