That headline sounds like some conspiracy theory/Big Brother stuff, right? Well, it happened to our friend Jake Thiewes over at Out Motorsports.
What the what? Let us explain–or, rather, let’s let Jake explain.
First, you might ask, who is Jake? Jake runs the Out Motorsport community. He’s also a longtime NASA official and participant. He campaigns an E36-chassis M3. …
Full details of this encounter, with photos, can be found at Out Motorsports.
David S. Wallens said: How do you ensure one isn’t present? And what would you do if you found one?
In reply to bigdaddylee82 :
Totally.
Hi all and thanks David for sharing this!
The dealership follow-up was hilarious, they tried telling me they had "uninstalled the device via software." They threw all sorts of free oil changes and details at me, I told 'em to remove my name and contact info from every CRM tool they had and to not pull this E36 M3 on someone else. I don't need handouts, I just value honesty and getting what I pay for (or don't).
In reply to Brake_L8 :
What the hell were they hoping to get out of you? Why the spying?
These must cost the dealer nothing if they just left it in you car , or a dealer screwup and whoever was going to remove it was not told to......
I doubt it was to remind you about service on a paid for used car....
I have a box of those trackers around here somewhere , from a dealership that put them on bad credit cars.....
Imagine the havoc if I installed it on the Cessna I used to fly.
GIRTHQUAKE said:In reply to Brake_L8 :
What the hell were they hoping to get out of you? Why the spying?
They install the devices for fleet management. Great way to see where all your vehicles are on the lot and track if one gets stolen, I suppose. In truth, the dealer doesn't care a lick about my location but they also don't care to remove the device because it costs them labor to do so. The easier way is to charge me $399 and provide "free tracking in case your wife drives the car!" or something. I don't know who needs to spy on their spouse but the whole thing is BS, and if I did need to spy on my spouse, UConnect offers a similar function built in to the Ram that doesn't involve poorly hacking up some wiring.
californiamilleghia said:These must cost the dealer nothing if they just left it in you car , or a dealer screwup and whoever was going to remove it was not told to......
I doubt it was to remind you about service on a paid for used car....
I have a box of those trackers around here somewhere , from a dealership that put them on bad credit cars.....
Kahu claims the devices will also remind you of service via the app/email. Dealerships want you to keep coming back to them for your service work. It is absolutely a selling point of the Kahu service when they try and convince you to keep the device. The issue is that the device doesn't tie in to the vehicle for mileage, which means it's logging the miles I drive based on GPS (and thus, the routes). How else will it know that I've added 5k miles to the truck and should get the oil changed?
It's the solution to a problem that didn't need additional solutioning, but it's important to remember that the consumer is not Kahu's customer. The dealership is Kahu's customer. The consumer who buys the vehicle with the tracker installed is a secondary source of bonus revenue for Kahu.
Appleseed said:Imagine the havoc if I installed it on the Cessna I used to fly.
You have to have it in 20 days... ADS-B
Besides fleet tracking, I wonder if they're getting kickbacks from lenders or insurance? I know the "buy here pay here" lots put GPS trackers on their cars to quickly find it in case they need to repo the car. I can imagine insurance companies wanting to use the data to track you real driving habits. Definitely shady, but if they stick the reasoning in the fine print, 90% of car buyers will never notice it.
-Rob
Many add it because it makes repossession MUCH easier if they have a lein on the vehicle...
rob_lewis said:Besides fleet tracking, I wonder if they're getting kickbacks from lenders or insurance? I know the "buy here pay here" lots put GPS trackers on their cars to quickly find it in case they need to repo the car. I can imagine insurance companies wanting to use the data to track you real driving habits. Definitely shady, but if they stick the reasoning in the fine print, 90% of car buyers will never notice it.
-Rob
My particular dealership (Fair Oaks Ram) offers in-house financing. I suspect if I had used it, they would not have given me the second key (read the linked article, I had to fight to get Key #2) and kept an eye on my location in case I didn't make a payment. Surprising that a big-name, not-BHPH dealership offers financing like that, but if they do, they also need to have training on how to handle an educated consumer rolling in with their own financing and no need for any 1984 tactics.
In reply to Apexcarver :
Incentives from some lenders wouldn't surprise me, after all it makes the truck easier to find if the truck broadcasts its location.
The dealership probably installs these on their lot cars so they know exactly where they are on test drives, etc.- possibly in exchange for a break on their insurance or something.
They then pass the charges down to the buyers as an add-on feature, and possibly to get kickbacks from Kahu.
From their web page (which I'm not going to link)- "This is Kahu, connected car and stolen vehicle recovery technology built for dealer groups and independent dealers."
So, a related item: Who owns that tracking data?
Let's say that Kahu or whoever tracks your driving habits. Where is that data stored, and who has access? What's keeping them from selling that data to anyone with a few bucks? "Hmm, Mr. Jake, we see that you spend a lot of time at tobacco stores, so your health insurance rates are going up."
So finding them isn't usually too hard, if you suspect that one is present, for someone with some automotive knowledge and a wiring diagram.
Generally these systems need a constant 12v source, so that they can phone home, and need to be placed somewhere with a decent line of sight so a giant antenna isn't necessary.
If they're being used by BHPH, they're also generally wired in to act as an immobilizer.
Combine that with the fact that installation is done in a lazy manner, really just the cigarette lighters, somewhere adjacent to the OBD II port, or just inside the firewall (tapping the battery directly) are the likely locations. Maybe behind the glove box if someone is feeling fancy.
Most places aren't going to under take the headliner out, pull the seats, or run a line back to the trunk. They're also usually not going to do a bang up job installing it, despite the fact that a pigtail wouldn't be that hard to create for an OBDII tapped situation. If something looks berkeleyey, that's usually the dead giveway.
For the police, their equipment generally doesn't transmit. So the GPS tracker will be in a location where it can be easily retrieved and usually magnetic. Under bumper covers, behind gas tanks on frame rails etc.
David S. Wallens said:So, a related item: Who owns that tracking data?
Let's say that Kahu or whoever tracks your driving habits. Where is that data stored, and who has access? What's keeping them from selling that data to anyone with a few bucks? "Hmm, Mr. Jake, we see that you spend a lot of time at tobacco stores, so your health insurance rates are going up."
It's like cellphone companies selling your location data (and the legal nonsense that goes into third party doctrine.) The company who collected the data is the owner. They can usually disseminate it however, and to whomever they choose.
Edit: If you want an interesting read about this situation from earlier this year: here you go. Mind you when the big 4 stopped in March it was all voluntary, there's no binding legal obligation.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
I'm actually very surprised we haven't seen something similar to that happen yet. "Police chief Wiggum, this is Uconnect/Kahu, our customer Mr. Simpson had been parked outside Moes Tavern for 3 hours now, and has just left for home".
The0retical said:David S. Wallens said:So, a related item: Who owns that tracking data?
Let's say that Kahu or whoever tracks your driving habits. Where is that data stored, and who has access? What's keeping them from selling that data to anyone with a few bucks? "Hmm, Mr. Jake, we see that you spend a lot of time at tobacco stores, so your health insurance rates are going up."
It's like cellphone companies selling your location data (and the legal nonsense that goes into third party doctrine.) The company who collected the data is the owner. They can usually disseminate it however, and to whomever they choose.
Totally agree. I guess, and this is me being totally naive, I trust my cell phone carrier a tiny, tiny bit more than a company that specializes in GPS systems designed to facilitate vehicle repossessions. Still, gotta wonder who has that data and what is being done with it?
In reply to David S. Wallens :
Just edited my reply with an article detailing that for you. Bail bondsmen, private prisons, and credit monitoring companies love that kind of stuff.
In reply to The0retical :
See also: While grabbing lunch from Publix yesterday, we watched a car outfitted with license plate readers cruise up and down through the entire parking lot. Where's that data going, and who has access to it? (And, yes, I filmed them because I'm that guy--I'll tweet it out here in a few.)
In reply to David S. Wallens :
Private company, they can (and do) sell that data to anybody who's willing to pay for it. Including governmental institutions who IIRC aren't allowed to collect the data themselves.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
So that's a whole other issue.
LPR use isn't limited by federal statute, unlike attaching a GPS tracker to a vehicle which requires a warrant.
So what you end up with are companies like Palantir Technologies who sell specialized software to aggregate the time/date/location of a vehicle then index and map it. That data can then be used to build profiles on motorists and potentially track nearly any vehicle. The NSA allegedly uses the same software for the PRISM program.
Supposedly the data doesn't leave law enforcement databases, but in the case of LAPD (and SFPD) there's no oversight to confirm this is the case. There's also no data retention policy which has had the EFF and ACLU up in arms for quite a while.
Wired on Palantir, LAPD and LPR's
The Intercept on Palantir and the NSA.
Repo companies do something similar with LPR's. There's a couple of databases which track the plates of cars marked for repo. These companies sell access to the database, equipment, and software to tow companies which allows them to drag parking lots looking for a hit in the database. The operator then flags the location for tow and they swoop in to repossess it. You probably saw the forward vehicle doing the trolling if it wasn't an unmarked law enforcement car.
In those, cases the data is generally owned by the company selling access to the databases. There's also no oversight for these types of operations.
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