Mozilla Says Modern Cars Are Data Collection Nightmares on Wheels

Agreed. Logging everything is generally a good thing.

But there’s no reason the logs need to ever leave the car. Just save it all internally so a service tech can extract it, if necessary to fix a problem.

Uploading all those logs, including sensitive data like driving habits and location, to a cloud server, on the other hand, is inexcusable.

If you’re not using a service that actually needs this information (like GM’s OnStar - which provides cloud-based navigation), you shouldn’t be expected to send this information anywhere.

Now I’m glad that we never bothered setting up the Internet connectivity on the family van (a 2018 Kia Sedona). It has never been configured to access the Internet via any mechanism (e.g. home Wi-Fi or family phones), so it is almost definitely not phoning home (unless there’s a cellular radio included somewhere, but if there was, they wouldn’t be asking us to configure it for Wi-Fi.)

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