submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by to c/technology@lemmy.world
 

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[–] 142 points 6 months ago (3 children)
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    [–] 58 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Your car has a series of numbers and letters on the back of it that are unique to the vehicle, and can be used to track you as well. There are even automated cameras that can do this.

    Tracking a vehicle is easy, and always has been.

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  • [–] 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

    However, the researchers found that these tire sensors also send a unique ID number in clear, unencrypted wireless signals, meaning that anyone nearby with a simple radio receiver can capture the signal, and recognize the same car again later

    Its not quite the same ball game. Sure its not great that the government can track easily with ALPRs, but this type of tracking is available to nearly anyone and could be used for significant crimes like stalking or human trafficking. It can also be done without a sightline of the car, unlike a camera system.

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  • [–] 53 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Your license plate can also be used to track you

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  • [–] 24 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    You are correct, the only thing worth mentioning is when the laws were created/written it did not account for someone creating a database that is easily searchable/queried to infer all these extra habits of people.

    Its one thing visually seeing someone over and over walk or drive by your house while you sit on your porch. It's another thing to now know where they came from and where they went if you were able to sit on every porch at the same time in a town or city.

    This is why police tails need to be granted by a judge, but a interconnected network of cameras at the moment does not recieve the same scrutiny.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I think part of why the cameras don't have such scrutiny is the city often has signs stating they use the cameras and will list their locations. This gives a somewhat implied consent from the driver, idk if it holds up in court but its similar to a sign at a store saying you're on CCTV. The sign doesn't say the CCTV could be used to track and monitor you but its implied.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago

    They mention this in the article. The difference is that since the tire sensor sends out an RF signal, direct line of sight isn't necessary. You could throw a tracker up on a roof and grab signals from a block over.

    The missing part may be tying that signal to a specific car, but say your car gets pulled over - they could read your tires' sensor ID and compare it to where they captured it and bam! Now you're fucked.

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  • [–] 30 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (90 children)

    A local city proudly mentioned on the news that they had a system that could track TPMS sensors. Pretty much all cars after 2008 uses TPMS sensors that each broadcast a unique identifier to the car. They aren't hard to remove, and you can buy valve stems that fit your car (0.452 hole) at any auto parts store.

    EDIT: The sheer amount of replies to this post days later that basically state "This is too hard to do, and it won't work anyway, so you are stupid to try and shouldn't do it", all from people who clearly have no real idea how the TPMS system on a car works, have confirmed for me that I was correct in spending a half hour removing these devices.

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  • [–] 91 points 6 months ago (34 children)

    By "aren't hard to remove" you actually mean requires dismounting the tire from the rim, remounting it, and then balacing it. This is far beyond the capabilities not to mention equipment of the typical layperson. Plus, your state is likely to conveniently fail your car on its next inspection for a nonfunctioning TPMS system, same as your check engine light.

    If you're going to go the distance anyway, get your tire shop to mount aftermarket Autel sensors in your rims. Using the readily available diagnostic tool, you can occasionally reprogram those (wirelessly!) with a set of random IDs and then also program your car to use them. You'll be a lot tougher to track if your signature is different every week.

    I'm not about to do this just yet, but I do have the tool for more mundane purposes and I only paid around $200 for it several years ago.

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    It seems most states with mandatory vehicle inspections don't fail for TPMS problems.

    https://www.tirerack.com/upgrade-garage/what-are-state-tpms-regulations

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (48 children)

    Yeah, a couple problems with that:

    1. You're going to have a tire pressure light on forever.
    2. There's a reason these are mandated. They're critical safety (and efficiency) systems.

    As always, these are systems of convenience, and the alternative is to check your tire pressures every day before leaving home.

    Older cars use a wheel speed sensor-based TPMS. It's not as effective or reliable but it also doesn't emit any signals that can be read by other devices.

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  • [–] 33 points 6 months ago (33 children)

    I managed to drive cars for 30 years without a TPMS sensor and the only time I ever had a to check the pressure on a tire, was when I knew i had a leak and didn't have time to fix it. I can also tell by the way my car drives if a tire is soft. I also had an air pump in my car powered by a cigarette lighter adapter that I could fill my tires.

    My current car, from 2019 doesn't have one. I've managed to own it 7 years (this week) without needing to check the pressure 2500 times.

    The assertion you need to check your pressure everyday without a TPMS system is ridiculous.

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    [–] 27 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    Dude, my car has GPS and a 4G internet connection as well as my android phone and my work required iPhone ... In a world like this, Tyre sensors are probably not required to track me.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    On the other hand, my 21 year old vehicle has none of it, and my GrapheneOS phone isn't tracking me either. We didn't all just give up like you did.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago

    I spoke with my landlord about removing power to the home security cameras, because they were Ring. He obliged my request, but I later discovered that he (in private) regards my preference as that of a rebellious teenager in need of a cause. I had to let that sink in… I’m a rebel without a cause because I don’t sip from the same koolaid as he does. Wow.

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    [–] 20 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    among the hundreds of other things that "could be tracking me"

    at this point I wouldn't be surprised if my inner most thoughts weren't already uploaded to some giant government server.

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    [–] 18 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    They discovered a thing that everyone's known forever. Here's Bruce Schneier in 2008

    https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/tracking_vehicl.html

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    [–] 18 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    License Plates, Vin Numbers clearly available on the dash, Tire Sensors, Bluetooth MAC, WIFI MAC, Cellular IDs for most even if you don't pay for the service.

    It's an interesting thing to point out, but we're mostly driving around with much higher power sensors than the pressure sensors.

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    [–] 17 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    Because each sensor broadcasts a fixed unique ID, the same car can be recognized repeatedly without reading a license plate. This makes TPMS-based tracking cheaper, harder to detect, and more difficult to avoid than camera-based surveillance, and therefore a stronger privacy threat.

    This seems like a real stretch.

    Cameras and automated license plate recognition are absurdly cheap at this point. And cameras have much greater range and reliability than whatever wireless signal interception this is, which the researchers have said is effective up to 50 meters.

    Meanwhile, from the office where I sit (which happens to be more than 50 meters above street level), I can see a highway and read the license plates of all the cars maybe 100-300m away. Plug in a cheap phone as a simple webcam and I can probably log all the license plates that drive by, maybe even correlate that to makes and models of vehicles for redundancy.

    And who's going to detect that I've got a cell phone camera pointed out of my office window, or that I'm running that type of image recognition on the phone?

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    [–] 14 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    All these "unintentional" tracking devices begin to look intentional.

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    [–] 14 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Jokes on them, those tire pressure sensors are the first thing I don't replace. I just visually check my tires and put a pressure gauge on them if they look suspect.

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    [–] 12 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Flock in a few months: “introducing a license plate reader that doesn’t need to see the license plate. The magnet leaf you got on Amazon to get through red light cameras won’t be enough to fool our dystopian surveillance system anymore”

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    Yeah, I dont have any, nice try

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    [–] 11 points 6 months ago

    Wait till you see how many Bluetooth devices still do this. Or better yet, Ant+.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Jokes on them. My TPMS sensors died a while ago, and I haven't felt the need to fix it.

    Now I'm a ghost! /s

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    [–] 10 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    TIL that these sensors transmitted via a wireless signal rather than being hardwired. I've never heard of them needing to be replaced due to dead batteries.

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    [–] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Eh, the fucking cellular modems in my car that stream the camera data for training can be used to track me. Hell, the anti theft tracker that I paid money for can be used to track me.

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    [–] 8 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Theres a spy device in your pocket.

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    [–] 7 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    I mean- anything that communicates wirelessly could be used to track an owner/user of a thing.. Is it likely? No, but is it possible someone puts radios under the pavement at intersections to log TPMS sensors? Sure- fuck now I'm messing with my own head. Never mind.

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    [–] 5 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    My truck hasn’t been able to communicate with my tire pressure sensors for years, I’m not worried about mine.

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