She stopped responding to him, she said, even though he texted and called her hundreds of times.
Ms. Dowdall, 59, started occasionally seeing a strange new message on the display in her Mercedes, about a location-based service called “mbrace.” The second time it happened, she took a photograph and searched for the name online.
“I realized, oh my God, that’s him tracking me,” Ms. Dowdall said.
Dacia gang rise UP
Old cars FTW!
Yes, older ones don’t have tracking or user agreements which give the car company the right to record audio of your teens having sex. But that’s not a long-term solution.
Yesterday: New cars
Today: Old cars
Tomorrow: No cars
Without government forcing change, yes.
So surely there must be an easy way to cut/disconnect whatever antenna(s) are used for OnStar, LTE, Bluetooth etc. in modern cars? I know when I finally am forced to get a car with always-on systems I will be looking for ways to disable them.
You can, but the result is that a bunch of navigation, tire pressure monitoring, and other features break
That sounds like a bonus to me. Seriously I have bad luck with those type of sensors, fulty pieces of crap. Also built in navigation is shit and if it also breaks every other stupid feature like bluetooth or back up cam id consider that a bonus. Mind you if I ever got an electric car id probably cut off the roof and remove the doors to improve the mileage. So maybe I shouldnt be allowed near modern cars.
Fine with me, I don’t need those :)
Why is it people only care about digital privacy when it effects someone in a negative was like this.
For me the basic concept that someone can sell you something with the ability out of the box to do that and whatever else they want to do with it worries me and makes me want no part of it
People have been warning about all this back when the internet started becoming popular. People just stopped caring when they got so many services for free. Now we are seeing all that public and private presence backfire on us.
Yeah like, ok my hypothetical teenage child borrowing my car, I want to be able to see where the car went and how fast it was going to get there. Because I know from personal experience that teenagers are idiots and need some level of supervision. Similar vein, stolen vehicles. So it’s a feature with some utility.
I’m even OK with my insurance company offering a discount if I give them telemetry so they know I drive the speed limit and am not a risk. Though for people on the low end of the economy in a place where insurance is mandatory that can verge on extortion - so I’m only conditionally OK with it, the condition being that there must be a tier of mandatory insurance which is price capped regardless if the telemetry is granted or not. Because in a lot of places not being able to drive cuts people off from pretty much everything.
But I am absolutely not OK with the feature being so insecure that I can’t lock users out, and am not notified by several channels about new users. Also I am super not OK with the car company itself getting telemetry without my express permission. I dgaf how it might improve the future product. I bought a car, I did not buy a spy.
In this particluar case though, it is complicated because the technically the ex is the actual owner of the car. I have no idea why the court didn’t force him to sign it over to her, but I can see why the car corp isn’t being helpful. It’s deeply unfortunate that this stalker is able to keep doing his thing via the car but at the same time regardless of how many unlockable doors the car has, it’s his behavior that is the proximate issue. Like yeah absolutely get the car fixed, but how about also the legal system steps up and makes this entitled loser knock it off?
Although this is beyond the skill set of most people, you can unplug the cell connection.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After one of their fights turned violent in September 2022, Ms. Dowdall, a real estate agent, fled their home in Covington, La., driving her Mercedes-Benz C300 sedan to her daughter’s house near Shreveport, five hours away.
Ms. Dowdall called Mercedes customer service repeatedly to try to remove her husband’s digital access to the car, but the loan and title were in his name, a decision the couple had made because he had a better credit score than hers.
Modern cars have been called “smartphones with wheels” because they are internet-connected and have myriad methods of data collection, from cameras and seat weight sensors to records of how hard you brake and corner.
Detective Kelly Downey of the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office, who investigated Ms. Dowdall’s husband for stalking, also reached out to Mercedes more than a dozen times to no avail, she said.
Katie Ray-Jones, the chief executive of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said abusive partners used a wide variety of internet-connected devices — from laptops to smart home products — to track and harass their victims.
Adam Dodge, a former family law attorney turned digital safety trainer, called car app stalking “a blind spot for victims and automakers.”
The original article contains 1,642 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
