I am now using my car’s Bluetooth Audio (older android, not the Android Auto kind) again and I realized that the music track title and podcast title displays on my stock entertainment system. That means my Graphene is sending some metadata into it and I wonder if these get collected and read during dealership maintenance.
Do we have any positive information if Bluetooth audio track metadata is collected, and stored within the in-car entertainment system to be processed by the car dealerships for selling for advertiser data purposes? My gut feel says yes, particularly for those newer Android Auto in-car entertainment.
Another concern is that I am using a very old android system with a similar feel to Android 4 (Jelly Bean era) and of course the firmware and bluetooth isnt up to date and that should be some risk there.
While I have used Aux-in in the past to directly hook into the sound, I kind of want to make my commute safer by using the dashboard rather than the smaller buttons on the phone.
It was only recently that the broader public became aware of the data being collected by your car (It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy. There still isn’t a ton that is known for certain about what car companies are doing with the data. PrivacyForCars has a good breakdown of the 5 levels of connectivity in cars. Most new cars are probably sitting somewhere between level 3 and 4. Many of these features can’t be easily disabled but ever since the Mozilla report on how horrid privacy is in cars, there’s been an uptick in automotive forums about limiting telematics. I found some posts online for my car about how to disable the cellular connection so the data stays local to the vehicle but I’m not sure what implications that could have for maintenance, resale value, etc.
I am curious if there is a way to DIY a privacy respecting car infotainment. The standard 12V 5-15amps seems like a lot for a Raspberry Pi to use. Just rip out the whole thing after the car electrical system warranty voids.