post
Class action for unilaterally modifying the agreement about feature access after the fact and to the detriment of the consumer.
Just another shitty company.
Cars didn't need apps in the 1900's and they sure as hell don't need them now.
Hopefully this doesn't affect me
Why they do this:
After the first three years, Volkswagen is charging ev customers €150/year to see the charge level on the app, remotely start the air conditioning, schedule charge and so on.
Any tinkerer is thinking "well, if I am paying this extortion just to see the charge level on the app, then I want to exfiltrate my data in home assistant or similar, getting better stats and so on"
So they blocked the API with Google play integrity signatures
Now, instead of spending money on engineering ways to block uncertified devices, they could have simply introduced an official API with rate limits and stuff.
The fact that they noticed all those "unauthorized accesses" it's prove that people just want to pay for a lightweight API access, not a 250mb app that takes 4 minutes to remotely start the air conditioning
After all, we're talking for €150/year for accessing the data of a €1 iot sim card using 0.0001€ of compute time. There should be enough margin for that.
Ty ,for info , next car will be no VW.
Why does a car need an android app?
Ok, don't buy Volkswagen. Got it.
Also, don't buy "connected" cars. FFS, if your car features rely on an internet service provided by the manufacturer, you are just begging for these sorts of shenanigans.
Change it from they block GOS to they spy on you. Get it in front of as many people as possible. If they get huge negative press they’re more likely to change.
privacy-conscious drivers
company’s mobile app
Hmmm.
Time to de-Volkswagen, then.
I said long time ago that EU really needs to focus on opening up the platforms. Force app makers to support de-googled phones. Force car makers to support de-googled phones. You can't become technologically independent if you don't control the platforms.
My car is staying dumb as long as possible it seems, I despise these tricks leeching into every new car these days.
This is highly misleading. Hopefully there's a link in the article to the original report on the GrapheneOS forums, where they talk about the app update breaking it on multiple platforms, not just GrapheneOS. It does not appear to be a block.
But why?
When XavDub contacted the German car maker, the company responded that GrapheneOS “is not an official Volkswagen offering” and advised them to contact their OS provider instead.
This is the only official word from Volkswagen in the whole article. To me, this reads less as "We are blocking GrapheneOS users" and instead "GrapheneOS is not something we give any official support" which I think is a key distinction.
It's not clear what's different in the update that doesn't work with GrapheneOS, whether it's an API call that doesn't work or if they've implemented the Play Integrity API - but I think this article is a bit sensationalist and everyone's reacted only to the headline.
Also with the most recent update, the halo collar app no longer has access to Google satellite data IF you operate Graphene OS. I suspect Google is the culprit because the folks at Halo have no idea how to fix this bug
Volkswagen of all people.
After this fuckup: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/Q8ZAV9/
They should be the last ones to deny anyone else using privacy preserving tools.
(Hint the player has multiple audio tracks, there is a dub in English)
Decisions that nobody understands. What do they have to gain with this?
top 96 comments