[clipclopflop]

Years back I bought a model3 infotainment unit on eBay to hack on - it’s absolutely insane at the amount of data contained on them. After gaining access to the system I was able to get the VIN of the car and find the salvage auction from the car it came out of - it had been wrecked. I then was able to get all the location data that gets logged, showing a glimpse of the previous owners life (house, work, stores they went to, etc) as well as the final resting place of the car. The last gps locations logged were at the end of a “T” intersection in North Carolina - google street view gave a nice look at the trees the car most likely hit :>

[Shocka1]

This doesn't just apply to Tesla of course. You've discovered what is in most modern Infotainment systems. The car no longer belongs to the customer and is a source of continuous revenue for the manufacturer - at least that's the way the C-suite sees it. Early in my career I worked for one of the most popular car companies on the Infotainment team, and I argued for customer privacy and data on a daily basis with managers and other engineers. I was always the minority.

[foobarian]

Neat! What's the hardware like, a Linux-ish computer with SD cards? Or SSD? Which filesystem?

[clipclopflop]

HW wise, the older units were intel atom based cpu (latest gen is amd I believe?) - the hardware is typical embedded stuff - cpu + eMMC + bt/wifi mcu + cellular daughter card. OS is linux + QT UI stuff. I would expect things have changed for newer HW revisions, but the previous gen did not utilize encryption (dmcrypt) so all data was unprotected at rest.

[gwbas1c]

I suspect it's Windows, actually, and I'm pretty sure the UI is some form of C#.

They tried to recruit me for the UI. If I lived closer, I would have jumped on it. Not only was I bit of a Tesla fanboy at the time, I used to work across the street from their office and really liked that area. (Deer Creek Road in Palo Alto.)

[normie3000]

> a glimpse of the previous owners life...

...and potentially death?

[clipclopflop]

I tried to dig up news articles in the area and could not find any reported fatalities - but yea, maybe?