This is mostly a corporate problem of risk aversion in my opinion. Some department writes down a risk assessment with a list of miniscule risks, for example of some 3rd party app backend being hacked. Or just a headline "Tinkerer hacked his car to use with his home assistant" in the local press. This list circulates, and since nobody in the middle management wants to be responsible for anything, and there is no officially approved positive use case, draconian countermeasures are drafted and constructed one by one.

They appear to have seen making their Home Connect platform open as at least in part a matter of compliance with EU data transparency and portability laws.

They don’t. Majority of users don’t care, and some middle manager shmuck, working on MySkoda, can report how “we” prevented a huge security risk and funneled valuable ~~cattle~~ user data where it belongs.

Because people will still buy their cars. The average Joe has very little regard for their privacy. We've been trained to be numb.

> Is this really a tangible income stream?

Yep.

> Is it really increasing security?

Nope.

1. They dont think anyone will stop buying their cars because of this

2. They want to make more money

3. (speculation) The drop in demand for their cars in china is leaving them fucked, they need revenue now

It's practically a law of business: executives prioritize their power first and their company's profit margins second. This is one reason why outsourcing coding was so popular despite not saving money and being so commercially disastrous - execs were in the driving seat with that relationship much more than they were with us.

Despite what some people will tell you about how the home assistant consumer segment "doesn't matter" (it does) it really is more about the tangibility of control over data vs the intangibility of lost consumer goodwill.

Companies are not profit maximizing at all costs. The shareholders and the executives are not a singular body they have different and sometimes wildly divergent interests.

In this case, it's by Play Protect on Android, and whatever they use on iOS.

or products/companies that explicitly expose API access to their products.

Well, that and making it possible to deploy devices you own in environments where they might be physically accessible to people you don't want extracting credentials from them. Or for ensuring people can only access sensitive company information on company issued devices rather than being able to casually make a copy of any data they have access to somewhere else. Or using a phone as a credit card payment terminal without the possibility of displaying one payment amount on screen and authorising for a different amount.

I'm quite firmly in favour of anything I own giving access to the data it's generating in an open format but screaming about how there's no legitimate use for attestation is quite simply nonsense.

they are just asserting their T&C more precisely now.

  [0]: https://github.com/cyberjunky/python-garminconnect

I think revolutions are more successful when there is some new idea of what to replace the system with. Currently I did not see anything remotely interesting (ex: french revolution came with the new idea of equality before the law, which was not the case before), and I think is mostly due to low overall education - you can't improve a system if most of the people do not think about complex issues like laws, taxes, efficiency, etc. Everybody loves to point a finger at someone and blame them (immigrants, rich people, woke people, etc.) like that would "miraculously" solve any issue.

If you had any actual understanding—:as opposed to just hearing this little factoid in passing and have been waiting for every opportunity to whip it out— you’d know that already. It’s funny as a quip, but don’t for a a second act like it’s a legitimate point, which is exactly what you’re doing.

I'm all for voting with my wallet, but it gets exhausting trying to be a few steps ahead. And then nothing guarantees that there won't be a rug pull once you bought the car.

> or petition to government to put pressure on them

Right. Not sure why you have to mention it, since everybody knows this works oh so well.

The problem is that all these T&Cs are just pages upon pages of legalese that not only nobody understands or even reads, but that also aren't exactly advertised before buying. "Buy our smart widget! It only works with its own app, and we'll only support it for a ridiculously short time! Please don't upgrade your phone, or it will stop working!"

Of course governments should do something about it, but even here in the EU, they don't seem too bothered. Hell, even people seem generally fine with it, judging by the number of crappy widgets they buy.

That maybe fine, but if something is allowed at the time I've bought the car, and then the manufacturer changes their policy such that the usage that I did is no longer allowed?

BTW, to me this is bullshit, first cars shouldn't be connected to the internet in the first place, in the case that they are, I would need to be in full control of what I can do with the API, not that I need to use special software to talk to my own car.