Connect Your Phone to Your Car? It Just Downloaded All Your Text Messages and Call Logs

That's right, when you connect your phone to your 4Runner (or just about any other modern car) it immediately downloads all your text messages and call logs. And you just wanted to listed to Chopin's piano sonatas!

Multiple lawsuits were filed against the big five automakers but all were thrown out since it could not be proven that the text messages and call logs were then off-loaded from the vehicle to the mothership. Nevertheless, a copy of that text you just sent to your husband is now in your vehicle's infotainment system and you have no way of deleting it. Your 4Runner has all your texts. All of them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...alleging-infotainment-systems-invade-privacy/

 

You can delete them. I have yet to see an infotainment system that doesn’t have a “reset to factory” option.

 

I guess Toyota will know about all the dirty sexual stuff I do and my plans on world domination.

SWEET!

 

Every time I see terrorists running around in Toyota Hilux pickups, I often wonder at what point Toyota will have sufficient awareness of their locations to help see if drone strikes are powerful enough actually destroy the pickups.

 

Wow. I can tell you've watched a lot of Homeland.

 

I did reset to default when I bought my used 4Runner. It’s simple & being a 2015 it has limited tech. I like no sunroofs & no TSS on my rigs

 

Homeland was good.

Fauda was better.

First episode of Fauda, I was thinking, “Oh a wedding, they’re going to drone it!”

Could not have been more wrong.

Seriously though, I suspect there is a huge amount of intel that is gathered and not acted upon simply because they need to wait until it matters most.

 

Related article here: https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/car_text_harvesting/

“Per the first amended complaint filed in the Honda case, Honda infotainment systems in vehicles manufactured from 2014 onward "store each intercepted, recorded, and downloaded copy of text messages in non-temporary computer memory in such a manner that the vehicle owner cannot access it or delete it," plaintiffs argued. "Even if the text message is deleted from the smartphone, the Honda vehicle retains a copy in on-board memory, even after the smartphone is disconnected."”

Ninth circuit.

 

When you connect your phone via Bluetooth, it asks if you want to do this. Just select "No". You can still make calls, do other voice commands, and listen to music with your phone without sharing anything with your car.

 

Thank goodness for that. How often do you delete your text messages and call logs from the infotainment system?

 

We don’t pair our phones anymore because Bluetooth always seems to hijack conversations from other devices.

Wired Apple CarPlay is the way to go.

 

It does?? My iPhone asks me if I want to share/upload texts and contacts and I always hit NO.

 

Oh man that is good news. What's the lawsuit all about then? Crazy.

 

There was an article I posted a while back where a journalist had taken their used car to a software guy who was able to pull not only contacts and texts, but all addresses entered as destinations into the nav system. This was data from previous owner AND current owner of the vehicle. The article was from 2017 and applied to a Chevy Volt from what I remember. It appears that stuff is stored indefinitely unless the owner does a factor reset (hopefully it's erased then).

 

*Failed lawsuit.

 

I owned 5 Chevy Volts before my 4Runner (2013, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2017) so this is relevant to me. When I sold each one, I did a full factory reset on my infotainment. However, if anyone reads my texts, I just want to let them know, it was cold in the room and I was nervous when I sent my ex those pictures!!

 

Sadly, they probably won't read this post

 

This is starting to sound like it could set a precedent in regards to individual privacy in the near future, One would think this could not be readily available for advertising and marketing as it seems the information swapping is not clearly laid out upon vehicle acceptance.
Seems to be this should be a "Main area" to be concerned about when signing the paperwork. Once again leaves a lot to be desired

 

Unfortunately, this ship has long sailed. Nowadays, it passes legal muster to simply put a user agreement that says “you use this, you give us consent to do xyz, and we can change this “agreement” at anytime to include anything we want”.

Governments are not interested in imposing “burdensome” regulations on the businesses that collect and sell data. Much less understand how google etc. do business.

 

This is exactly why I dislike vehicle data collection. It used to be that the consumer was the product, and you chose to hand over your data in exchange for a service that is largely optional. Now we're moving toward a paradigm where you pay full price for an essential product, like a car, and the manufacturer continues using you as a product for additional profit, and the consumer doesn't really have a choice in the matter.

As consumers we're letting the market dictate our choices, and it's supposed to be the other way around.