G.M. Tricked Drivers into Being Spied on (Including Me) | Hacker News Reader

G.M. Tricked Drivers into Being Spied on (Including Me)

nytimes.com

36 pointsgautamcgoel7 comments

It's nice to see the mainstream (non-techinical population) starting to understand what's going on with corporate surveillance, but this GM thing is really just one small example.

This is nothing in comparison to the scope of surveillance performed every moment by the "phone" app industry, as well as modern WWW technology.

It's ironic (in a deadly sort of way) that so many people are so willing to stake their lives on support of the 2nd ammendment (which brings very little practical benefit to anyone), while ocmpletely ignoring the massive violations of the 4th ammendment (which could bring bennifits to almost everyone).

I found out in an interesting way that our GM vehicle had been enrolled in this.

I was shopping around for a new homeowners policy and as part of that process, also got some quotes on auto coverage. One of the quotes that came back had a note on there that I was enrolled in that insurance company’s program where you hook up their dongle to your OBD port and, I dunno, I guess in the short term maybe get a discount but in the long term give them some excuse to cancel your policy.

Well, I was not only not a customer of that company, but I obviously hadn’t hooked up their dongle, but this GM thing had been in the news right around then so I had an idea of what might be going on. After running the gauntlet to try to access my privacy settings - sure enough, I had allegedly consented at some point to GM’s program. (I absolutely had not.)

I don’t know how on the back end this caused my car to show up as enrolled in the insurance company’s monitoring scheme, but I assume it involves so sort of white label insurance product and/or an exciting new level of integration that doesn’t even require the dongle any more!

Can’t wait to get my six months of discounted credit monitoring from the class action settlement.

This will keep happening as long as developers are content to take a paycheck for building the systems that steal data.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. [1]

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/11/your-loved-ones-are-prisoner...

"It's hard to get a man to understand something..."

This is only really a solution if ALL developers are unwilling to write such s/w.

As recently demonstrated by the Goggle employees protesting the contracts with Israel, the company can simply fire you and replace you with someone willing to perform those tasks.

If a company can make money from an activity, it will be pursued. There is no place in the accounting ledger to enter moral rightousness.

The only practical solution to massive corporate surveillance is regulation.

And professionalization so we can push back.

Lawsuit accuses GM of sharing drivers' data with insurers without consent

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40134739

Reply on news.ycombinator.com