Replace car with phone as nearly everything possible with a connected car can be done with a phone… except CO poisoning, of course.
We willingly give up our privacy everyday. I had to give the NY Times my email so I could read this article about the lack of privacy. Ironic, huh?
For many of those sites, including the nytimes.com link above, you can bypass any “registration” or supplying email by selecting the “reader view” in your browser. You won’t get the graphics and you may need to reload the “reader view” page to get the full article, but it should work.
Not an option in my browser.
I got blocked from reading it via the link, but then I just typed the title into Google and was able to read it. It’s definitely a disturbing trend, and something I’d consider in my selection, were I purchasing a car.
I have several browsers loaded. NY Times does not allow me access on any browser without subscription, same with Consumer Reports. NY Times does allow a free trial period, but I already used that up, that did require email address.
Im all in favor of “connected car” apps. I use it all the time to check on where my wife may be if she’s left the house while I’m asleep.
Do you mind sharing which browsers you are using?
I use both Firefox and Chrome/Chromium, and can easily read NYTimes articles without entering any email address.
On Firefox, just select “reader view”. On Chrome/Chromium, it’s called “Reading mode”, though I believe it must be enabled first in settings in order to select it.
I browse with lynx. I always have free access.
Still using a 286 processor based computer on dial-up, too?
I learned that lynx has been around since 1991. That is ancient by computer standards.
I am all in favor of privacy and freedom from intrusive (government) searches and seizure. I also don’t like being spied on by big corporations. Therefore, I would NEVER own a vehicle which contains any sort of remote communication, driver monitoring, or telemetry features. I don’t care about whatever so-called “benefits” these technologies claim to provide. I have lived without them for more than 40 years, and I’d just as easily live without them for another 40 years.
The main subject of the story is a woman who is driving her estranged husband’s Mercedes and has discovered that it has vehicle locating feature.
The woman asked Mercedes to shut off the phone app features but they cannot because she does not own the vehicle. Rather than dragging the vehicle manufacture into your marital problems, why not return the car to the husband.
SeaMonkey lets you turn off the style sheets completely. You can probably install custom style sheets too but I never looked in to it. I think they use CSS2 style sheet functions to create the banner that covers the text. This allows search engines and bots to still see the text in the article but regular browsers can’t.
Even on the other examples where the wife owned or co-owned the car the company didn’t shut off access to the car’s tracking feature, These apps are sometimes the only way couples can share a car with access and starting through the app since the car’s only come with one fob. In some cases as the article states the features can be used in a way not intended by the automaker.
Browsers:
Safari
Duck
Chrome
Go to nytimes.com, get synopsis of articles, click on synopsis of article, get request to subscribe/log in, no tab for “reading mode”.
Same on all browsers, using an iPad.
Hi Purebred:
I don’t use Safari, but when I did a search for reader mode on Safari, it says there’s a Reader View button. You should be able to click that once you’re on the nytimes article and read it without any request to subscribe or login.
On Chrome, you need to go into settings and enable “Reading mode”. Doing that makes the “Reading mode” button available. Then when you’re on the nytimes article, you can click on the “Reading mode” button and read the article with no request to subscribe/login. I’ve verified this works.
Ironically Duckduckgo does not have reader mode, in spite of the many complaints about it.
This isn’t rocket science. Adding security to keep this from happening is actually very trivial. I don’t know why car companies aren’t doing this.
As for tracking. Tracking per-say isn’t really a problem, unless you’re extremely paranoid. If you don’t want any tracking then stay in the dark ages. That ship sailed years ago.
A valid point. It appears from your comment Mercedes does provide a method built into the tracking function that allows the dealership to turn it off. It makes sense however they can only turn it off by the owner’s request. Perhaps the best way to handle this situation is either for the husband to agree to turn off tracking voluntarily, or for the woman to get a court order to allow her to turn the tracking feature off. Hopefully it is clear by the various in-car displays when tracking is on, vs off.
It appears Chrome does not offer this when used on an iPad. Not going to drag out my old windows 7 laptop 
Agreed. I’ll keep buying cheaper, older used cars to avoid having an internet connection with the car.
No thanks.