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Honda Refuses to Track Stolen Accord Because Owner Didn't Pay for HondaLink
- new_guy 7y agoWouldn't that make Honda an accessory to vehicle theft? They know where it is but won't tell anyone.
- ronnier 7y agoIf they were forced to tell, why would anyone pay for the service? Why would Honda keep the service around if Honda had to foot the bill and not be compensated for it?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hiccuphippo 7y agoCan't they turn the device off for vehicle owners that don't pay? Why do they collect the data if the owner does not pay for the service?
- ceejayoz 7y agoHow would you turn it back on again when they do pay? Having to visit a dealership to enable the feature would cost them more in "meh, I can't be bothered" lost sales than the couple kilobytes of cellular data probably incurs.
- freehunter 7y agoIf the car has a cell connection they can enable the feature remotely.
- logfromblammo 7y agoThis is the kicker for me. If the owner didn't subscribe, Honda should not be able to locate the vehicle at all. This implies that Honda is able to track every HondaLink-capable vehicle at all times, without permission of the owner. Are they doing anything with those data?
- mzs 7y agoIt's a privacy concern as it is now too. I would think that if I did not pay then they would not collect the info to begin with and that's precisely why I would decline.
- GnarfGnarf 7y agoExactly. It would be like buying an insurance policy after your house burned down, and expecting the insurance company to pay up retroactively. Although Honda could save themselves some grief by not tracking at all if the owner doesn't have the service.
- mzs 7y agoThey will likely change it so that the people on the phone can't see any info about any car not in the plan instead. Just easier than patching every car already made.
- djrogers 7y agoNo, they are not an accessory - they had no involvement, prior knowledge, or active involvement with covering up the theft at all. The fact that they could have discovered information relevant to the investigation merely makes them part of that investigation. The proper way to compel them to spend their own resources to determine the location of a vehicle that may have been stolen would be to present a warrant for that information.
- devtul 7y agoTake that indignation and push for legislation to install active tracking on vehicles at all times. /s
- kbos87 7y agoI don’t see a problem here. It isn’t free for Honda to staff the call center and maintain the tech that allows them to do this.
- minikites 7y agoI don't see a problem here. It isn’t free for Crassus to staff his fire brigade and maintain the chariots that allow him to do this.
- ebg13 7y agoIf the government wants to set up a tax structure to pay Honda for its call center staffing, the government is perfectly able to do so modulo things like votes and whatnot.
- loopz 7y agoRegardless of subscription payment or not, if they gather evidence of a crime, they must release such information to the police if presented by a warrant. Illegal tracking is another issue.
- loco5niner 7y agoThey offered to do that if presented with a warrant
- beerandt 7y ago>the employee reportedly told them to "get a warrant," leaving Ablhd with no choice but to drop approximately $112 on the service in order to get his vehicle's location. So why didn't he just get a warrant? The surveillance video provided clear evidence of a crime.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoOnly takes a couple of hours to chop a car down to enough parts to make it hard to find. Thieves aren't dumb -- I mean, plenty of them are, but plenty of them are smart enough to also know there are tracking devices in common consumer vehicles. Give them enough time and they can find and remove or disable such trackers. OTOH, turning on the tracker ASAP gets you a location now, and that's something the police can move on.
- beerandt 7y agoMaybe, but that's more of an argument against hypothetical police inefficiency than anything else.
- catach 7y agoI expect reforming the justice system might take too long as well.
- mlyle 7y agoI don't think it's unreasonable for getting a warrant to take a couple of hours. We want judges to be able to think at least a little about each of their cases.
- beerandt 7y agoI don't think that's the usual cause of the delay, though. And for time critical issues like this, it shouldn't be.
- dylan604 7y ago
- yabadabadoes 7y agoI'm pleased that they at least required either a transaction or a warrant. How would they verify that police and the owner are legitimately making the request?
- protomyth 7y agoYeah, I can see the estranged, violent stalker using this feature to find the location of a victim. So, if your car has the potential of manufacturer tracking, you really need to make sure that any estranged partners cannot activate the feature. I wonder if shelters have some list of cars that can be tracked?
- beerandt 7y agoI agree. And am glad they're not handing over personal info without a warrant. That said, it's easy enough to look up a police departments phone number and call back, should one want to verify they're actually taking to the police. It's not a problem of verifying identity.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> it's easy enough to look up a police departments phone number and call back, should one want to verify they're actually taking to the police This requires staff, training and monitoring to prevent abuse. When done, it introduces liability. It's reasonable to ask to be compensated for all that.
- beerandt 7y agoComplying with police and/or court orders is a cost of doing business. If your business subjects you to that beyond a trivial amount, the cost needs to be otherwise built-in to your business plan. Especially if you're a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. They can't exactly claim ignorance like a start-up might.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
- hsnewman 7y agoIf the deductible for the car was > $112 for the service, I'd think it would be a good business decision to just pay for the service.
- freehunter 7y agoIs this something I'm supposed to feel outraged about? Amazon refused to give me an EC2 instance with 2GB of RAM because I only paid for 1GB. Microsoft refused to give me 1 hour response times because I only paid for 24 hour response. Google refused to let me use Gmail with my own domain name because I didn't pay for Gmail for Business. Nest won't show me what happened on my camera five days ago because I only pay them to store that data for three days. If Honda offers a service that lets you track your car and you choose not to pay for the service that lets you track your car, you should expect that Honda will not let you use that service for free. And we should all be especially glad that they didn't provide the information to law enforcement without a warrant. There is a provision in the legal system for law enforcement to infringe on your right to privacy, and it's called a warrant and has to be authorized by a judge. This is one of the core tenants of many Western justice systems. This seems like a complete non-story. "Man didn't pay for service, company refused to provide said service for free". Kinda loses the punch there, doesn't it?
- beepbopboopboop 7y agoaccess to car tracking is a human right
- devtul 7y agoNews today seems like an outrage business, an editor skill can be measured on how he or she can turn some inane happening into a blood-boiling title.
- beerandt 7y agoIf we were talking a private eye, yes. But is there any precedent for charging the police to collect extant evidence? (Assuming a warrant is actually presented.) I honestly don't know.
- jpollock 7y agoFrom the article: Honda Canada spokesperson: "Without an active subscription, the police would have to present a warrant to activate the location services on the vehicle and no such warrant was provided. At no time was Honda or its HondaLink provider aware of the location of this vehicle."
- woliveirajr 7y ago> HondaLink® Service* Is a subscription-based service that provides convenient features such as voice communication in case of emergency, online security, and one-on-one operator assistance. (source: 2019 SEDAN OWNER’S MANUAL) Perhaps a case of not reading the manual, clicking next, not reading the EULA... ?
- rabeener 7y agoThere’s a larger concern (at least for me) not being discussed here. There is conflicting information from Honda: the customer support rep stated (allegedly) that Honda did have the location of the car while the spokesperson later denied that Honda ever had the location of the car. If the customer support agent is correct, the driver was in a vehicle, owned by him, that had surveillance technology in it without his knowledge and that could be activated by Honda, a private company, without his consent. That’s not ok.
- devtul 7y agoWe might have two possibilities, if the car is sending "I'm alive!" then it's ok, the rep could say they have the vehicle online, maybe the rep wasn't so accurate with his words and said they had the location. But if it's "I'm alive, my coordinates are X, Y" even without an active subscription, then this is a big issue.
- rabeener 7y agoI only have this article to go off of which has the customer service rep saying: > An employee at a call center operated (or contracted) by Honda reportedly confirmed that they had the vehicle's location, but declined to share it But even if it’s just pings, the pings have to leverage some sort of network which can be used to establish a general location if not an exact one. That’s still too much for me.
- davengh 7y agoAt a certain point, it is incumbent on the buyer to do some research and understand something about what they're buying. The availability of these systems is not a secret. We just put up a Ring doorbell on our house. I know that making the (surveillance!?!) video available to my phone requires something be stored somewhere and transmitted over some network. Storage and transmittal mean other people will have it at some point. Should I be surprised or offended about that at some point in the future? Or offended that after some trial period I may have to pay somebody for that service?
- 7y ago
- mullingitover 7y agoI don't understand the urgency in recovering the stolen vehicle. It's a brand new car, which means it was insured, which means it can be easily replaced at no cost to the owner. If my car was stolen I'd be shopping for a new one, not trying to play cops and robbers.
- bb88 7y agoI'm not sure the article says it had full insurance. The driver is only required to have liability, which insures damage to others property, but not your own. And in some places even that's not required if you can put up a bond on lieu of insurance.
- mullingitover 7y agoUnless the brand new car was purchased in cash, and the owner had very poor judgment, it was financed and the financing terms typically require comprehensive coverage.
- driverdan 7y agoI find it a much larger problem that they're able to track the car in the first place, especially since he didn't have a subscription.
- davengh 7y agoIf he did decide at some point to buy a subscription, the simplest way to enable it is to send a signal to the sleeping-but-live tracker. Else he'd have to go to a dealer for some "factory authorized" service. That might not be reasonably done in some locations.
- drivetothedump 7y agoGiving up privacy in exchange for convenience. This should be an opt in feature, not a company tracking your every move and doing who knows what with your data. Even when you don’t pay for said feature.
- driverdan 7y agoThere could be a physical switch on it that keeps it turned off. The owner could then turn it on when they want to activate it.
- SanchoPanda 7y agoI can completely see the inverse business model popping up: default on for everybody and everybody gets the location at all times via google maps; pay 100$ for increased privacy.
- Jamwinner 7y agoThats already the default except for the option to buy-out of the system.
- tabtab 7y agoWhy doesn't Honda sell an as-needed "finder service" for say $200? They'd make some money without looking like a jerk. The $200 should probably be premised on actually finding the vehicle. Honda makes money, customer gets car back: a win-win. (It probably should be coordinated with the cops. Walking straight into a crook's den could be daunting.)