This isn’t surprising at all to anyone paying attention to what the Tesla app lets you do with your vehicle, or if they have interacted with Tesla support. All of that info is available in the app, including viewing not only live camera feeds from sentry mode, but also saved recordings from the USB drive installed in the vehicle now. Clearly if you can do that from the app, the company can do that and more.
Similar stuff is almost surely possible with any of the other manufacturers that have mobile apps with similar functionality as well.
Hell, shit like OnStar had similar functionality to remotely unlock vehicles before Tesla even existed.
OnStar freaked me out after an accident in a rental car a few years ago. We had no idea the rental car had it. We got rear ended by a drunk driver and spun 360 degrees off the road. Within a second or two of coming to a stop a voice was asking if we were ok.
What I mean was you can not subscribe to OnStar, and then you don’t have OnStar no more. The spying hardware is there, just not used.
As opposed to modern cars with which you don’t subscribe to anything and they spy on you without your consent, and there’s nothing you can do about it short of - like you said - ripping out the spying hardware.
This isn’t surprising at all to anyone paying attention to what the Tesla app lets you do with your vehicle, or if they have interacted with Tesla support. All of that info is available in the app, including viewing not only live camera feeds from sentry mode, but also saved recordings from the USB drive installed in the vehicle now. Clearly if you can do that from the app, the company can do that and more.
Similar stuff is almost surely possible with any of the other manufacturers that have mobile apps with similar functionality as well.
Hell, shit like OnStar had similar functionality to remotely unlock vehicles before Tesla even existed.
OnStar freaked me out after an accident in a rental car a few years ago. We had no idea the rental car had it. We got rear ended by a drunk driver and spun 360 degrees off the road. Within a second or two of coming to a stop a voice was asking if we were ok.
Yeah but the crucial bit of difference was, if you thought OnStar was too invasive, you could turn it off or buy a car without it.
Good luck buying a car that isn’t online and snitching on you all the time, or disabling the telemetry today.
You can disable your own access to the service. Short of ripping out the cellular module, you can’t disable OnStar’s access.
What I mean was you can not subscribe to OnStar, and then you don’t have OnStar no more. The spying hardware is there, just not used.
As opposed to modern cars with which you don’t subscribe to anything and they spy on you without your consent, and there’s nothing you can do about it short of - like you said - ripping out the spying hardware.