Kashmir Hill has a really good article on how GM tricked its drivers into letting it spy on them—and then sold that data to insurance companies. Powered by WPeMatico
Category: cars
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a variety of techniques drivers are using to obscure their license plates so that automatic readers can’t identify them and charge tolls properly. Some drivers have power-washed paint off their plates or covered them with a range of household items such as leaf-shaped magnets, Bramwell-Stewart said. The Port … Read More “Cheating Automatic Toll Booths by Obscuring License Plates” »
Kasmir Hill has the story: Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate … Read More “Automakers Are Sharing Driver Data with Insurers without Consent” »
Soon we will be able to unlock and start our cars from our phones. Let’s hope people are thinking about security. Powered by WPeMatico
Article based on a Mozilla report. Powered by WPeMatico
Turns out pumps at gas stations are controlled via Bluetooth, and that the connections are insecure. No details in the article, but it seems that it’s easy to take control of the pump and have it dispense gas without requiring payment. It’s a complicated crime to monetize, though. You need to sell access to the … Read More “Hacking Gas Pumps via Bluetooth” »
A new Mozilla Foundation report concludes that cars, all of them, have terrible data privacy. All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label—making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed. There’s a lot of details in the report. They’re all bad. BoingBoing post. … Read More “Cars Have Terrible Data Privacy” »
The robot revolution began long ago, and so did the killing. One day in 1979, a robot at a Ford Motor Company casting plant malfunctioned—human workers determined that it was not going fast enough. And so twenty-five-year-old Robert Williams was asked to climb into a storage rack to help move things along. The one-ton robot … Read More “On Robots Killing People” »
A used government surveillance van is for sale in Chicago: So how was this van turned into a mobile spying center? Well, let’s start with how it has more LCD monitors than a Counterstrike LAN party. They can be used to monitor any of six different video inputs including a videoscope camera. A videoscope and … Read More “Own Your Own Government Surveillance Van” »
License plate scanners aren’t new. Neither is using them for bulk surveillance. What’s new is that AI is being used on the data, identifying “suspicious” vehicle behavior: Typically, Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology is used to search for plates linked to specific crimes. But in this case it was used to examine the driving … Read More “Applying AI to License Plate Surveillance” »