- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
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That one is easy: do not get a new Honda.
Don’t buy a new car, there, FTFY.
You can opt out by simply not buying one :)
Solution: If it’s spy on you then don’t buy it.
Next problem.
There isn’t much of an alternative. All major manufacturers have been doing this for a while, we are approaching the point where you’ll need to buy and maintain a classic car to avoid this type of data collection. Unfortunately, most people simply do not have the time, money, and expertise to do that. Nor should they have to.
Counterpoint: sometimes it’s difficult to tell if something is surveilling you, especially for laypersons.
The size of the title on that article is insane on a monitor.
Anyway.
Companies are quick to flaunt their privacy policies, but those amount to pages upon pages of legalese that leave even professionals stumped about what exactly car companies collect and where that information might go.
Does anyone remember that report about the university researchers who studied one of these smart thermostats and concluded that you would have to sign more than a thousand legal disclaimers to properly consent to have it in your home?
I feel like not buying a Honda would be a pretty good way to opt out. In fact since the majority of car manufacturers are doing this bullshit I feel like simply not purchasing a new car is a great way to opt out of this.
Plenty of older not smart cars that are perfectly usable or fairly easily restored no reason to go dropping the money on a brand new one that’s not only a privacy disaster but a repairability disaster on top of it.
I think my favorite is how almost all new cars now come with a sealed transmission with absolutely no way to replace the fluid in it with the claims of it being a “lifetime fluid” there is no such thing as a transmission fluid that can last and do its job forever, what they mean by LifeTime fluid is that it will last long enough to satisfy the warranty. And what they have deemed should be the usable life of the car.
Shit I hadn’t heard about that sealed transmission thing, that’s fucked up. Transmission fluid replacement seemed pretty important on the maintenance schedule of all the cars I’ve had
I believe Honda started this in the early 2000s because they found that transmissions were compromised at earlier mileages at a much more frequent rate from leaks, bad fluid changes, or missing the intervals, than were actually failing from use. So they designed the cars for how they were actually being used and maintained. It’s kind of a non-issue unless you’ve got 300k+ miles on your transmission, at which point you’d expect to potentially replace it anyway.
It’s been happening for a long time, even some cars is far back as 2012 have a supposed lifetime fluid. Although they at least still have the drain bolt so that you can say yeah that’s cute and do it anyway. But lately the drain bolt has gone away and they are completely sealed meaning you can’t change it even if you want to
Just today I said goodbye to my 2012 chrysler minivan because of the “lifetime sealed transmission.” Now Chrysler minivan transaxles have always been garbage, this is known. But mine said in the owner’s manual, “lifetime, sealed transaxle” “no fluid fills or dipstick.” I worked at a Chrysler shop and asked the service manager - “nope, don’t need to do nothin’.” OK, all good.
Yeaahhh… That’s not entirely true. 160k on the odo and it lost the desire to ‘go’ in drive (no forward progress in drive despite the little engine trying it’s best), a hell of a scream coming from the engine bay and a light show of errors on the dash. Limped it home and the code reader said that gears 1 & 3 had a “ratio mismatch” which should only happen if they lost teeth, and a couple others I don’t remember. Figured it was scrap. Had a mechanic friend look at it; he popped off a tube, fingered it a bit, sniffed it and said to try changing out the filter and as much fluid as I could. Did that, dropped about 5qt in (with no goddamned dipstick, how do you tell how much it needs?) and the thing ran great for another 3 months. Until today when it started making the whining noise again. Dropped it off and said goodbye.
Fuck “sealed” transmissions. Sorry, I had to rant. I loved that van - no tracking, had a Sirius radio that has 50 song and 50 artist alerts and 300gb on board mp3 storage, and the 2 screen DVD system (great for parents that don’t want their kids on tablets but still want to occupy them on long trips)
Cars are just catching up to HVAC systems… In the last 3 years I’ve had to replace both inside and outside fan motors because their (maintenance free) bearings failed.
For those who haven’t yet bought a Honda:
- you have the option to buy from alternative brands to say fuck you using your wallet
They’re basically all doing it, so make sure to research who is doing it the least.
Or at this point, the one whose tracking is easiest and safest to avoid or circumvent.
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The only car makers that give data deletion options are Dacia Renault:
Only two - Renault and Dacia, which are not sold in North America - offer drivers the option to have their data deleted
Good news! Has the time finally come for us to buy a Dacia Sandero?
10-15k for a new car where do I sign up?
Call me an asshole but I think giving driving habit information to insurers is great, so long as good habits are given discounts and bad habits are punished.
I’m one of those people who would love automatic enforcement of driving laws as well as user reportable incidents of other drivers (given you can provide footage of something you’re reporting.)
If people don’t like living under the law… maybe the law shouldn’t exist. “That’s the way it is” is a terrible excuse for fucking anything.
Oh, and make audit trails for this shit public record. Someone creating AI videos or fake reports? Punish that too. It’ll never happen though. People want laws for others, not themselves.
Yeah let’s encourage citizens to report their neighbors for every legal offense, this kind of thing has always gone well throughout history
Say, I’m pretty sure I saw you invite a couple folks into your home the other day, and I never saw them come out. Oh would you look at that, the SS is here!
Similarities to fascism aside, this is still an awful idea. Have you ever dealt with automated rule enforcement? It’s an awful way to enforce rules. But even if every single report had a human follow up on it, there’s also massive, unprecedented privacy issues. You may be totally fine with my insurance company knowing where I am 24/7, but I sure as hell am not. I’m super not okay with a government (which we have) gaining free access to that information for anything they want (which they would). Oh hey, we’re back to fascism
who picks what habits are good and what are bad? who decides what happens to data beyond this? can you going to mcdonalds twice a day be shared with your health insurer? can you going to that rally be shared with the local police? with your landlord? are you comfortable with everyone knowing everything? because there’s two things you do with data: analyze, and sell.
can you going to mcdonalds twice a day be shared with your health insurer?
You think this data isn’t already shared?
you think that I’m in favor of everything I’m not currently talking about?
no thanks. i hate the entire concept of insurance (especially lawfully forced insurance). there’s no way i want them spying on me.
there are parts of the west where there’s not another car for miles. why should i be punished for minor infractions on a lonely country road when i put no one but myself at risk? this is the same as getting ticketed by a camera for running a red light in the middle of nowhere.
if the law and technology becomes a tool of oppression, it no longer serves a useful purpose for mankind.
Basic traffic liability insurance sorta makes sense - it’d suck you had your car wrecked by someone broke and were SOL.
i think that if i am going to be forced to purchase a product from the market, then the government should just provide the product. add the damages to my tax bill if i get in an accident that’s my fault.
but don’t make me buy shit just to function in society.
it’s a scam. the money you pay in is always more than they pay out. it’s a for profit industry that i’m forced to fund. it’s a racket, no different from organized crime.
Fucking hell, you’re actually promoting a surveillance dystopia.
You’re fucked.
Without absolute transparency and total accountability it’s going to be abused, but we already live in a surveillance dystopia. Have you ever seen what happens to whistle blowers today?
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Please, Toyota, don’t do this. They refuse to go full out EV. Hopefully they too decide to keep some of these technologies away from their products.
I really don’t understand why going EV seems to be synonymous with “collect all the data.” The only differences should be in the drivetrain, and they don’t need to collect any data to switch that to an electric motor from an ICE or Hydrid drive system.
It’s already happening anyways on non ev cars and has been for years. They all have monitors and tech in there.
The sad part is that manual transmissions are going away, which means I’m completely SOL if the electronics die. But I guess on the flipside, there’s no transmission to break, so that’s nice.
Give and takes. I’m waiting another 10 years till I hop on the electric vehicle camp. Just want some more competition and reliability.
I suspect that it’s because they are marketed to be as much of a tech gadget as transportation. An iPad on wheels. So they figure that they can slip in this crap.
Yeah, and I really don’t want that crap. I just want something to get me from A to B that I can fill up at home. Give me something cheap and reliable and I’ll buy it.
c/fuckcars
Yeah. Fuck cars.
I think there needs to be more government involvement and protection in how data is collected, shared, and consumed; however, I also think people don’t realize that their perception of ‘privacy’ has always had the major benefit of being from the perspective of an individual that largely is unprofitable.
Many celebrities would very likely tell the public that ‘privacy’ is largely a myth and the reason their perspective is that way is because their lives, activities, and actions are viewed as profitable to someone. A lucrative paycheck from acquiring that salacious photo in a vulnerable position, etc is a big motivator, and if the celebrity gets mad at the paparazzi, there’s even more news about how the celebrity lost their shit for all the world to see; however, if the celebrity embraces the media and tries to work with them to conserve what little ‘privacy’ they have, there is negative news about how the celebrity is fake or too controlling about their image. At the end of the day, these celebrities simply want to have dinner out with family or friends and they can’t.
The general public isn’t used to the idea that someone cares enough about every nuanced detail of their decisions that it would matter… but it does. Sadly, a celebrity must spend thousands of dollars to secure their privacy, and even then it isn’t a guarantee… what hope do we have? In today’s society we use debit or credit cards, but all of the transactions are data mined by the banks and privacy is non-existent; however, with cash you have some built-in ‘privacy’ because at its core it is not easily profitable to track.
And that is the point; Data collection is slowly bridging the gap between a celebrity’s reality and normal everyday human perception of ‘privacy’.
I think there needs to be more government involvement and protection in how data is collected
There’s plenty of government involvement. They have access to this data, they can either buy it or simply request it. They don’t want to go back to the days of the pesky 5th amendment standing in their way, that’s why this will never be regulated out of existence.
you should use the term government regulation, not involvement.
The us government LOVES being involved in our lives.
You could just not buy a smart car. There is a used market although it is a shrinking industry
It’s not even limited to smart cars though. Yes used does let you a oid it, but it’s not like this is just people buying the fancy trims either. Shit like this is working it’s way down to the run of the mill standard cars year after year.
All newer cars are smart cars
I’m never buying a Honda again after buying a 2018 Civic model. Less than 10k on it when I bought it and the A/C went out. There’s an issue with the condenser on the 2018/2019 Hondas. They offered to pay HALF of what it’d cost to fix - I’d still be out more than a thousand. And from research online, apparently the replacements tend to fail too.
Pretty much every time I see the same model I ask if the owner has AC. They always have the same problem. It’s going to be real wonderful driving when it gets to the 100’s this summer…
And yet the AC still blows cold in my 2004 Honda that’s not ever had the AC serviced… Sad to hear Honda reliability is going downhill.
2018 civic owner here. Had the same issue with the A/C. Has anyone else had the paint flake off on the mirrors/door handles?
So we were told: “it may be covered by this recall, if it’s the parts that are covered by the recall that are the cause of the loss of A/C. If those parts aren’t the reason, it won’t be covered, and the diagnostic to determine that would then be $1,000$.”
So we have to take a $1,000 gamble to see if our 2018 car is covered under a fucking recall. Fuck Honda in the ass with a rusty anchor.
You can rip out the cell connection
What if it has a redundant connection? At the end of the day you do not own the car
Weird, I guess this title I registered at the dmv isn’t real.
I’m sure it only has one. And I’m not sure you know how ownership works. It’s privacy I’m more concerned about.
My point is people shouldn’t need to try to outsmart the car manufacturer for basic privacy rights. If you don’t fully control something you don’t own something.
Imagine if they remotely bricked a bunch of vehicles. (Ransomware maybe?) You would be powerless to stop them and out of luck. I’m sure there would be a lawsuit but you still would be without a car.
Disconnecting the antenna is probably not a bad idea but the problem is cars have become black box computers so you never know where there could be a weakness. For all you know it might be possible to crash the car systems via Bluetooth.
What I want is some user freedom laws plus some DMCA exceptions for consumers looking to escape vendor lock in. Privacy protections would also be nice but being able to change and examine software would be a step in the right direction.
Not always.
Sometimes it’s so integrated into the other systems there’s no separate component to “rip out”.
You may be able to pull the antenna cable and put a dummy on it (like used for testing radios). It’ll absorb all the RF from the transmitter.
I know how to opt out! I can opt out of buying a honda!
It’s not just Honda.
No
Are any of you even able to afford new cars? Who the hell’s buying this shit? I probably won’t have a new car ever.
People who have a college education and well paying jobs.
With my last raise I’m over 130k a year and I still don’t buy new cars. My 2010 Audi is still running just fine.
That’s great, but the question from that OP was “are you able to” and your answer should be yes. I make less than that and I definitely am able to. But I’m waiting on the market to correct first
Though it also depends on how you define “able to”. Like I could fit a car payment in my budget but it would eat up most of my disposable income and I’m not willing to give that up, even if new cars weren’t so enshitified. I bet there’s a lot in this “technically capable but it would be a stupid financial move” group.
I have a college education and a well paying job the monthly payment on a new car has doubled since I bought my last one in 2020. No way am I buying a new car at these prices/rates.
Fair enough
back in my day Spock had small hair
✅ well paying job
✅ Dropped out of college and went full time
People are buying new cars. I’m guessing it’s mostly leasing.
Total new vehicle sales has remained roughly static for a little less than two decades. So yes, people can afford new cars.
For most, they can afford to finance them, but the rates aren’t looking too good lately
https://www.statista.com/statistics/290673/auto-loan-rates-usa/
Well yeah, they follow the prime rate.
Also mind that soon these new cars will be used cars with the same bullshit.
It made sense to me when I could take advantage of a tax credit for EVs in 2017. Now that car companies/dealerships simply jack up prices to eat that discount, it doesn’t make sense even in that case.
Yes
Buying a new car never really made sense to me even when you could afford it. 2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper. Why pay more if you can pay less?
2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper.
I’ve always heard this, but where is this actually true? When I bought a Camry like a decade ago, I could get a brand new one for $19.5k or used ones with 50k miles on them for…$18k. so yeah I paid the extra 1.5k to not have to deal with potential random shit.
When my wife bought her car a few years ago it was a similar situation. The only used cars that were “a lot cheaper” had like 100k miles.
Mostly social signalling
Fuck social signaling.
Yeah rates alone have made financing a new car pretty stupid. Save as much cash as possible and spend within your means
