Nissan LEAF Leaks Speed & Location To RSS Feed 180
thecarchik writes "An intrepid tinkerer has discovered yet another security issue with the Nissan Leaf: it could be revealing your location and speed to websites around the globe. The issue stems from CARWINGS, the telematics system that Nissan devised for the Leaf. '... when Leaf owners use Nissan's RSS reader to access sites like CNN, the New York Times, or this one, CARWINGS supplies ... the exact location of the vehicle — latitude and longitude — and even the speed at which the vehicle is traveling at the time of the request.'"
What if you take the SIM card out? (Score:5, Interesting)
The LEAF has a SIM card to do its stuff wirelessly. What happens if you take the SIM out? Will it just queue up all the tracking info and upload it as soon as it gets reconnected, or is it a shoot-and-forget thing where the local copy gets binned regardless of if the transmission was successful or not?
I've been looking at the LEAF (and Tesla's line-up, yes I know the prices are vastly different, that's not an issue for me) and the whole "phone home" thing is a deal-breaker. I won't buy a car with OnStar or the equivalent unless I can be 100% sure that it is disabled. I don't need that level of hand-holding and I won't spend my money in support of such a product unless it has a 100% provable "off switch."
Re:What if you take the SIM card out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I own one of these... (Score:5, Interesting)
And the vehicle NAV screen displays an annoying message EVERY SINGLE TIME you start the car, explaining that it will be transmitting your location data and requires you to press a button on the screen to "agree" or "disagree." I assume if you disagree it won't send anything.
Mod parent up.
The LEAF has an RSS reader that reads (text to speech) the selected feed. I don't have any idea why they provide the location data to RSS feeds, but it is an opt-in system.