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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) by Grishnakh on Monday May 07 2018, @06:36PM
I'm sorry, but IMO the blame lies entirely with the manufacturer and the dealer. They should be ensuring that prior owners no longer have access to the vehicle.
For the keys, they should be reprogramming them all, and the car, so that only the keys being given to the new owner actually work with the car, and that old keys do not. I'm pretty sure some modern cars will actually show you on the car's computer which keys are programmed to work with the car, and allow you (or the dealer maybe) to disable certain ones. This should be standard operating procedure.
Same goes for any online access. The dealer should be making sure that old owners can't access the car, and the manufacturer should be designing the vehicle so that this is possible and directing the dealers on how to do it.
This is all basic security here, not rocket science.
It's no different than selling a house, and the new buyer changing the locks. With older cars, the same could be done. We usually leave this to the buyer, but for modern cars this isn't really as feasible (might require special service tools), so this should be something that the dealer is responsible for.