The people who researched this topic and wrote that article are most probably not the ones working on the browser. As any company, Mozilla has departments.

Mozilla is a large umbrella foundation that includes the for-profit Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation has always done plenty of work outside of the browser. I do agree that their browser development is having a ton of issues (for example, the lack of development of key features needed for the Android browser to be competitive, like a tablet UI and the slow roll-out of add-ons), but I think those are a result of flawed decision-making in the Corporation which happened independently of anything that the Foundation might be up to.

We’ve had up until the last few years.

Never gonna happen unless governments force them.

What WILL happen is that more and more non-critical features will become pay to play. You’ll rent the air conditioner in your car.

Installing your own software will become (or likely already is) illegal since if you’re u do that you could play without pay on the car that you paid for with your money.

Corporations must be limited I’m what they can do, NOW. No more data monitoring and selling. No more ads pushed. No more pay to play. No more limiting what you can do with the products that you buy and own

We need cars that aren’t giant IoT boxes that keep phoning home. The vast majority of “smart” car systems shouldn’t need an Internet connection to function. But yes, I agree with your sentiment.

The Teslas are powered by Linux as far as I know.

Then we can joke for two decades that this year will be the year the Linux car will be able to drive

Someone could probably make a good amount of money charging like $50 to stick a nail through the cellular chip of new cars to disable that phone home shit.

We had a Mozilla phone. Enough is enough.

You just need an older car with a DIN profile radio. You can swap it out for whatever you want.

I should chuck in a box with homebrew firmware for the lulz.

Many (if not most) new cars have their own cellular service built in. They spin this as being able to hotspot to your vehicle if you pay for data or being able to remote lock/start your vehicle with their app. However, the vehicle manufacturer has their own plan allowing them to relay back telemetry data regardless of whether you buy a data package.

Best way to sell a browser and software services built on privacy is to do a lot of consumer reports emphasizing the value of privacy.

Somebody had to take up the mantle since Consumer Reports cannot be trusted anymore

They keep it pretty narrow, their focus has always been very heavy in privacy. They don’t report on anything else really, just the privacy aspect.

Because when you’re big enough to have a recognizable brand name, it nearly unequivocally means you have to sell out to those who can fund you. Consumer Reports dropped off decades ago.

They will be CaaS

Sadly my 34 year old car is off the road at the moment. I loved driving it because it was so simple. Basic on/off switches. No computers.

Same, not exactly old but it’s a 2016 Kia Rio in the minimal configuration. Can’t say whether the electric window openers or the CD player would take the number one spot for highest technological advancement.

My cars best tech is the CD player lmao

There are EV conversion kits available, so it is possible to turn an old car electric. They won’t have the storage capacity of a natively electric car, but it is an option.

Unless it’s a classic, don’t. Just don’t.

You’ll be forever fixing and tweaking it and the integration usually sucks.

I have a 2012 VW Golf 6 and it’s still ok. You can connect your phone via Bluetooth, but it acts more like a BT headset. It can show a contact list and caller ID, but that’s as far as it goes. Maps can only be updated by buying a special SD card from VW. The car itself cannot connect to the Internet at all. It can read mp3 music from USB drives and SD cards. It also has a cd drive, and radio.

I’m quite happy with what it has. I know WV isn’t very popular in the US, but it’s common in Eastern Europe.

Depends on the OEM, but generally late-2010s is when it became more ubiquitous.

Any car with an infotainment system is probably a “risk,” but especially '20s cars with features tied to apps are the real vulnerability here.

There’s also a number you can call to have them stop doing it, supposedly.

My favorite: It collects the GPS coordinates of where you turned off the car and transmits that information. Every time you shut off the engine. We didn’t get the nav feature in our 2020 Mazda 3, but the hardware is still there so it can do this (and so buyers can pay $300 for the SD card that makes it work, which we didn’t).

But at least most of the information they collect is about the car, not the people, unlike some of the other brands.

I wonder if they detect me cursing at the car when it does something stupid, like swerving back toward obstacles I was trying to avoid. (That “feature” got turned off. I don’t need that shit in my life.)

Unfortunately convincing my wife we should buy an older car that doesn’t have all this shit is going to be a huge mountain to climb. Sigh. I hate new cars.

Permission is probably mandatory to use your car.

BuT tHeY nEeD tHaT sO tHeY kNoW hOw nOt tO dIsCrImInAtE aGaInSt yOu.

I don’t see how the things you highlighted are worse than any of the rest of it.

It’s all bad.

How would your car even know your sexual activity?

How do they even capture this stuff? Are you expected to write some essays before you can buy the car?

At the very least… cant the US implement one of the basic rules from GDPR?

In simple terms, what data can companies keep?

Data need to have: OK

Data nice to have: Not OK

If you don’t mind, please also highlight

health diagnosis data

genetic information

Because omfg, think about those for a second, and how any data that leaves your control is subject to eventual collection by law enforcement, legal or not, and anyone else willing to pay for it (or steal it):

For example, some bonehead rears your vehicle one day, but your health diagnosis data says you have a heart condition, or maybe just high blood pressure. These conditions can involve occasional lightheadedness, though you know yours is well controlled. You don’t even think about it anymore because you take care of yourself and all your regular tests are good. But suddenly, you’re in this minor accident, not even your fault, and it’s no longer a simple rearending because some asshole has brought your health history into it so that YOU and not he will be on the hook for monetary damages.

(Triple if the bozo who hit you is some lame ass drunk rural county sheriff or elected official.)

And “genetic information” is code for DNA. How they would collect your DNA from your car I don’t know, but do you REALLY want your genetic information associated with your vehicle and outside the confines of GINA* for the convenience of data sellers? I know I don’t. (GINA is also the law that binds companies like 23andMe from selling your genetic data.) But the whole point of trying to legislate personal control over your own genetic information is because of all the dystopian scenarios that can easily evolve from others having it without your consent.

Yet now your car wants it too? Question this. Letting anyone have it by such means does a complete end run around any law meant to keep your personal genetic information private, and guts any rights you may have to your own privacy under the law, because you signed it away. Imagine the billions insurance companies could make, both health and auto, by refusing to pay for this or that because genetically it was a “pre-existing condition” or a “contributing factor” to you getting rearended by a drunk.

I’ve never been so thrilled to drive an ancient beater in my life.

*Note: GINA is weak already, but legislators are trying to weaken it further still: in 2018 a proposed change meant that “Employers would have been able to demand workers’ genetic test results if the bill were to have been enacted.”

They are making money off me without paying me for it