The modern automobile is safer, cleaner, more efficient, and more technologically advanced than anything that came before it. Yet those improvements have come at a cost. For many owners, mechanics, and independent repair shops, that cost is repairability.
I still don’t get how telemetry is even legal.
If I purchase a vehicle from a previous owner, I do not have any agreement with the manufacturer regarding collection of my data.
Clickwrap should have been made illegal when they started doing it a quarter century ago. If I put a tracker on your car, I’m a criminal, but if every automaker drops a clause into the “user terms” on their vehicle sales, then every car you buy gets tracked forever, perfectly legally.
You agree when you use the car.
At least that is the legal claim.
There is a disclaimer when you start the car.
Wait… Every car I ever rented, borrowed or owned never showed a disclaimer anywhere. What are you driving that shows a disclaimer?
I’d check owners manuals, and any rental policies, or bill of sale/contracts. Sometimes this may show up when the vehicle is first taken out of pre-delivery mode and never again.
If it’s only at pre-delivery or in manual, then I buy the car second hand without a manual am I still legally complied to the disclaimer?
Not a lawyer. No idea, but possibly. Seems like it would be covered by some sort of clause about taking on those risks and responsibilities if you ride in or drive the car but how enforceable is that?
What choice do consumers have, anyway? Return the car cause you don’t agree with the disclaimer?
and then what are you gonna buy instead, a second hand car from the mid 90s before they all started adding telemetry modules.
I did literally that.
The real solution is regulatory, though, because obviously my boycott has done absolutely fuck-all to change manufacturer behavior.
yeah they know most people don’t know or don’t care, maybe selling the data from the telemetry to a data broker who on sells it to ICE might change some peoples minds…
Or if ICE starts connecting to the telemetry modules directly on older less secure models…