Reply With QuoteSeems fair enough if they also share data with the owner and the Police to recover your stolen Merc.
WTF Mercedes?!
Zee LINKYMercedes spies on drivers by secretly installing tracking devices in cars and passing information to bailiffs
THERE'S A SPY IN YOUR MERCEDES Mercedes spies on drivers by secretly installing tracking devices in cars and passing information to bailiffs
MERCEDES has sparked a privacy row by admitting it spies on drivers with tracking devices covertly installed in its cars.The secret sensors, fitted to all new and used motors sold by the firm’s dealers, pinpoint the vehicle’s exact location.
The firm sold more than 170,000 new cars in Britain alone last year.Mercedes will not say how long it has used the sensors. And it insists they are only activated in “extreme circumstances” — when finance customers have defaulted on their payments.
But it admits sharing car owner information and vehicle location details with third-party bailiffs and recovery firms who repossess the cars.
Fas est ab hoste doceri
Seems fair enough if they also share data with the owner and the Police to recover your stolen Merc.
It's hardly a secret. My Merc links to an app on my phone that tells me where it is. Which is quite handy when you are somewhere unfamiliar and need to know the quickest way back to the car. It's also used to tell Mercedes recovery where the car is if it breaks down. Allowing Bailiffs access to the tracker? Can't see what the problem is.
Edited to add, it isn't a dealer fit. It's a factory fit.
If you carry a smartphone then you are already doing it.
All high end cars, and many others, come with trackers now, it's pretty standard, so not sure that this is an issue.
But this one is GERMAN.Originally Posted by dickdutch
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
EU GDPR?
Good, they make the best cars (in my opinion)
Even our Captur tells us where it's parked.
Considering roughly 95% of all new car sales are done on finance such as PCP and PCH where the driver isn't the registered keeper it isn't a surprise and seems like a sensible move. Where it gets weird is on outright purchase, HP and used where the driver will be the registered keeper and has a tracker fitted without consent.
Either way it should be made clear.
Back in 2016, and probably before that, Range Rovers had the same, viewable in an app.
Present car gives info like fuel range left, location, directions to get back to the car, fluid levels and tyre pressures etc. Also records your journeys with mpg, speed etc and routes/times. You can turn that part off if you normally sleep in a faraday cage/have something to hide or are a 00 operative.
Also can remote start the car to warm up or cool down the interior and defrost the screen. which is cool feature!
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Not if you turn "Location" off
If only it was that simple. Your phone is essentially a tracker even if it's switched off, but not through GPS.
The Merc does all that too. Plus it sends me a message if the car is left unlocked, and once it sent me an email telling me the battery was flat. That did freak me out a bit.Back in 2016, and probably before that, Range Rovers had the same, viewable in an app.
Present car gives info like fuel range left, location, directions to get back to the car, fluid levels and tyre pressures etc. Also records your journeys with mpg, speed etc and routes/times. You can turn that part off if you normally sleep in a faraday cage/have something to hide or are a 00 operative.
Also can remote start the car to warm up or cool down the interior and defrost the screen. which is cool feature!
Relevant section of the UK act?
Even the GPS can be activated remotely with a modicum of effort. As can the microphones and cameras.
Mine goes in for a service next week and i joked with garage that next i will get a message when starting the car “ i have booked myself a service” quite honestly at my age and with my lifestyle i do not know where i am or what i am supposed to doing so if my car knows that’s a bonus.
I FEEL LIKE I'M DIAGONALLY PARKED IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
The issue sits around the controls of that data and who has access to it -...........:-)
B
^ this. Also, it's a potential security risk if the 'feature' is compromised/abused by 'friendly' or hostile actors esp it can be switched on and off remotely. ICYMI link
Fas est ab hoste doceri
A popular phrase on the forum seems to be ''if you don't have anything to hide'',,
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
What a great idea.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
You have the SOS button that tells the emergency services where you are, so hardly surprising they can always tell where the car is. We were in the Mach Loop in deepest Wales yesterday can’t get a phone signal but press a button where am I and it gives you exact coordinates
Soon it'll be mandatory for ALL vehicles to have real time tracking. As I've said before, this is why the government is so keen to get 5G rolled out. There have been two articles in Car mag about this including a more detailed explanation in this months issue.
And that one is bloody annoying, I know I've unlocked my car thanks
With all this technology one would have imagined that there would a be a solution to stop it being thieved from one's driveway.
In addition to 5G, the Highways Agency are already installing the tech needed for driverless cars, the first stage of which is to use vehicle tracking to manage the roads, so similar to the managed motorways we currently have, but based on real time traffic data.
Yes... why all the fuss when you're already walking around with a permanent tracker in your pocket? There there's the devices people willing install in their home so they can be permanently monitored and even track their energy usage. People seem willing to ignore things like this when it might inconvenience them slightly to do without. Speaking as someone that is phone free and zero home monitoring devices installed :-) I admit though my S3 does have 4G and I'm 100% convinced it tells Audi whenever I go to Waitrose ;-)
Are they? or are you talking about the truck convoy thing on motorways?
24/7 multi format data harvesting. Yay.
No, not talking about the truck thing. The first phase of the project is underway, with the final phase being the infrastructure for driverless cars, but that is a long way away.
Its been going on for decades. It's only now that "Joe Public" is aware of it.
Working in IT with internal corporate susyems, our user's would SH!T a brick if they knew what we had access to.
Haha, I do too, and you're right, all those communicator/skype conversations, emails that they thought they were really careful to delete, documents they've sent to print etc. Users really haven't got a clue how much of a footprint they leave.
how are they doing that, scrapping all traffic lights and zebra crossings?
Eventually, yes, something like that, I don't know about the detailed plans, just that the work has started, initially just the motorways and major A roads.
Any work that may have commenced wont be for autonomous vehicles as they do not exist, it is a marketing pipedream, even if the car was towing a Cray supercomputer behind it, it could not recognise a singularity, the technology does not exist, until this breakthrough happens there will not be fully autonomous cars, as things currently stand best estimates are it is 30 years away.
And when this does happen computing change completely.
It is a long way off, but what's being installed currently, could be used when there are driverless cars. The current implementation is going to be used to manage the motorways and major roads, using vehicle tracking systems.
Sure data collection, marketing and mining etc has been around for decades, but its the ubiquity and blithe acceptance of it's intrusion into all aspects of our existence that rankles and the subsequent monetization that makes me think of sheep being shorn, probably herded. Oh well.
If by 'keen to roll out' you mean it's trying to prevent Huawei from bringing 5G tech to the UK because the big boy across the pond told us so (so much for free market economy, fair competition, liberalisation of trade, globalisation and all that bull), then I totally agree with you.
Also, if it will be mandatory to have the real time tracking for all our vehicles then it a good thing isn’t it and we all will be able to pay road tax and insurance strictly according to our road usage/mileage we do in each of our cars, right?
Fas est ab hoste doceri
I'm assuming this is said tongue-in-cheek
My car has a reading for average speed.. The setting is turned off it seems, but I am sure it's still recording. Google is a great example.. Its what we don't know they know that would scare us if we knew.. Sounded right in my head anyway..
Sent from my LYA-L09 using TZ-UK mobile app
FirmlyI'm assuming this is said tongue-in-cheek
Fas est ab hoste doceri
Skynet becomes self aware 20??.......
😂
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
A couple of years ago I spent a day with Telefonica analysing what they could do with O2 mobile provider data... from plotting real-time traffic flooding into a city in the morning, and leaving in the evening, to average, maximum, minimum speeds of traffic, density of traffic, accidents etc. ALL of this was from just knowing what 4G masts a phone was connected to - not relying on GPS or anything else.
Of course, they only sold 'aggregated' data, but it obviously existed at a user level. And that was just the mobile connection data.
You probably can't imagine what Google, Facebook, Apple etc know about you... it's not just the things that you share with them knowingly - they analyse and interpret seemingly unrelated data to be able to monetise you...
If you can't see the product, you ARE the product !
e.g.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49520355
I always thought iPhones were the best; fool- and bomb-proof? Tse tse....
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
Bwaahahahahaha...
As was observed, your smart phone is just about the ultimate spy device with tracker, micro and double camera, only properly disactivated with the battery out which is not so simple anymore.
...plus fines for whatever infraction taken from your account automatically and instantly.
Posting Permissions
