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Last December, Ashley Sehatti sold her 2015 Jetta back to a local Volkswagen dealership in California. So when the calendar turned over, she didn't understand why she was still getting sent monthly reports about the car's health. After another one came in April, she finally logged on to VW's online portal for Car-Net, the telematics system that runs in many of the company's modern cars.
To her surprise, Sehatti saw the location of her old Jetta on a map, up-to-date mileage, and the status of the car's locks and lights. It had been resold, and yet she still had access to some of the car's systems. "There was nothing in place to stop me from accessing the full UI," she says over email.
What Sehatti hadn't realized is that Volkswagen puts the burden of disabling access to Car-Net squarely on the customer in its terms of service agreement when they decide to sell or exchange a car — even if the car is going back to a VW dealer.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/4/17303644/volkswagen-car-net-security-location-access
(Score: 2, Informative) by requerdanos on Monday May 07 2018, @05:32PM (2 children)
I am observing her behavior without trying to characterize her intent. Whether her behavior arises from malice, or from ignorant negligence, doesn't change the recorded behavior all that much, except from a philosophical angle. Whether her attitude was "Aha! I am stalking you" or "Ooops, sorry, accidently stalked you", the verb is the same; only the adverbs change.
We have a duty to behave responsibly without expecting corporations to take over our private accounts "for our own protection." People who fail to do so, like this woman in particular, put that in jeopardy. That affects me directly. I am speaking up.
I don't think you're quite following along.
For our own protection, right.
Even if that were true, VW never knew about it until the media posturing casting them as the enemy. The majority of VW dealers are privately-owned businesses who have an agreement with VW to sell and service their cars. That does not make VW magically aware of the used-car side of their businesses, nor should it.
Though VW does own some of its dealerships, primarily in Europe, they are trying to reduce the number [autonews.com] of company-owned dealerships even there.
Let's say I own a car by "Anonymous Coward Motors." If I later sell that car to a private dealer, for my privacy and the dealer's, it's none of AC Motors' business. Unless we have a nanny state where everything is required to be reported to everyone "for our own good".
I reject that. I exhort you to do the same. If you decide not to do the same, I respect that; in which case, as a minimum, you need to recognize that it's a valid view and not "trolling".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday May 07 2018, @06:45PM
You're placing blame entirely on the old seller, which is a stupid and useless course of action. This is how we wind up with a judicial system where your only recourse is to sue people, which rarely works out because the legal costs are far higher than you're ever going to get back in collections from some small-time scammer.
VW and the dealer need to be responsible here. VW needs to be responsible for building their cars so that dealers have access (upon customer request, or when the car comes into their possession during a sale/trade-in) to the vehicle and all keys or services which have access to the car, and are then able to cut off access to anything that's not authorized, be it old keys that the old owner kept, or an online account that the owner didn't disable. Whoever has physical possession of the car should be the one in control of this or have access to all this information, not VW, and not some random dealer, but any dealer who comes into possession of the car (or, any private party who buys it in a private sale) should.
In short, this is a problem that is easily solved with technological measures rather than the futility of blaming small-time (possible) criminals, just as it's much easier to just re-key the locks when you buy a new house rather than waiting around for the old owner to sell the keys to some burglars and getting burgled and then hoping to somehow not only catch and prosecute the burglars but also prove in court (with expensive lawyers) that the old owners were accomplices, and then spend enormous sums of money suing the burglars and old owners for your damages when they just stole a few TVs. Your proposed solution seems to be "let the crime happen then we'll use the police and legal system to correct it" rather than "take simple steps to avoid the crime altogether".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @07:00PM
Your very first "edit" literally asserted a character to her intent:
It may be the same verb each time, but it's the wrong verb. For it to be "stalking", in both colloquial and legal senses, would require repeated invasive action taken over time, of which you have no evidence.
And by using the word "stalking", this is another example of you trying to characterize her intent without evidence.
If VW are operating a service which lets people monitor the activity of cars which can be re-sold, then yes they are required by law to be aware of the user-car side of their business, else be in breach of privacy regulations. The obligation to keep VW informed of changes of ownership is likely in the agreements with those privately-owned businesses.