What will Google know about me with Android Auto

Gold95

RRZishe what can they do with audio routing control?

RRZishe route audio through the cars microphones and the cars speakers, or through googles assistant.

The problem is that cars (and googles assistant) are known to keep recordings of the microphones. This is not done with bad intent. Perhaps it's just a cache for performance reasons or voice analytics, or some type of black box recordings in case you have a severe car accident. However, bad can be done even if it was not intended by design. If it's a modern car, it´s basically a computer with remote access for the vendor (and the state through FISA order). If it's not that modern, a bad actor car mechanic can still copy the recordings from your car for fun and profit.

It's not that bad, unless it's a risk to your threat model (you're a journalist, whistle-blower or a famous millionaire).

mmmm

Gold95

Off topic rant:

I always got around this type of threat by buying old cars. More fun to drive too! But in my country this is becoming hard to do, as you’re not allowed to drive anything other than very new cars in more and more places. This is a good thing for the environment and pollution, but really terrible to be forced into changing from driving a dumb mechanical machine to a semi intelligent, semi autonomous, tracking and listening computer on wheels.

beppi

I am also very interested in the privacy implications of android auto. I haven't given any of the google apps network permissions so I'm not too worried, but is there anything that gets sent to google if I were to switch on AA network access?

Hat

mmmm I like the Bentley's work they do since many year to hide infotainment screens.

digital

Gold95 Any new research on this? It is ok to share some info to Google, as long as that info is not attributed to yourself. So if Google know that some random person is driving from point A to point B and listening to Mozart, well that's fine

de0u

digital If Google know that some random person is driving from point A to point B and listening to Mozart, well that's fine.

If point A and point B are genuinely random, that's one thing. If A is "home" and B is "work", and that trip (and/or the reverse) happens five times, there is a fair chance Google knows who was driving (and thus who likes Mozart).

There are various academic papers about de-anonymization of location data, but most seem paywalled. Here is an Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification

Threat models differ, so many people don't mind Google tying a device to a person. But some likely do.

SquirrelMaskSecond

GrapheneOS

Hi,

I'm still struggling to find out what data (if any) is sent to Google when using the sandboxed Android Auto implementation, if wireless permissions are enabled.

I can see that enabling wireless permissions forces the Android Auto app to have network permissions, which makes sense as I understand wireless Android Auto uses a temporary WiFi network to communicate with the car/radio. However, I couldn't find any information on whether any data is also sent to Google once network permissions are granted?

I have already searched the forums and read the Android Auto section on the GrapheneOS website, but if I've missed something and this has already been explained elsewhere a link would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you

cuharodoxyzx

not a GrapheneOS user but rather LineageOS+Microg .

I noticed that denying Mobile data permission (while allowing Wi-Fi permission for wireless Android Auto), causes Android auto to fail to connect. But if mobile data is turned off and mobile data permission is allowed, it will work. USB android auto works without any network permission.

Since I like the wireless connectivity, I captured the traffic. Essentially:

AA app didnt make any connections at all
Google app made a connection to the speech to text engine: speechs3proto2-pa.googleapis.com
Google app made a connection to some assistant related API: geller-pa.googleapis.com
Several connections from Google Maps app: mobilemaps.googleapis.com

I feel little at ease, unless AA somehow transmits data beyond what can be captured in this 30 minute session.

BTW: my AA is running on a tablet I havent tried to capture what the tablet is sending (yet). I know cars can get contacts/messages/and media information through android auto to "make announcements / notifications". I have no doubt that they will collect this data.

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