New to forums and Rivian - want to discuss my pre-purchase concerns

[mkhuffman]

There is no choice anymore. All vehicles are heading down this path. There is no choice but to go with new and fight the issues and hopefully get regulation from government that stops this crap if the companies don't do it themselves. I work in technology. I want connected things, but not connected things that use me as the item being bought and sold. And no, technology companies do not have a large amount on me, at least anything usable because don't use products as sold. I don't use products that remain under someone else's control without taking that control back or doing things to anonymize or make their tracking harder. Heck even my kids gaming consoles that require internet purchases, we don't buy games under a single account. We create a new user account with new email address one per game. We root our phones and install island that uses faked device id's per application and sandboxes each from each other and all are partially de-googled. People don't have to accept being bought and sold.

As I posted before, I agree with your concerns about data privacy and personal property rights. I will be right there with you as we lobby our all powerful government to implement some regulations that protect the individual from corporate power.

There are definitely questions (as you pointed out) around personal property rights, but also right to repair. To me those issues are one and the same. You should be able to repair what you own, and you should have total control over what you own (including software interfaces).

I recommend you buy a Rivian and then beat up RJ until he gives us access to do anything we want with our personal property.

Keep fighting!

Meanwhile, Iove my R1T.

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[Time2Roll]

Just get a view of the software agreement that comes in the purchase contract.

 

[getut]

There is no choice anymore. All vehicles are heading down this path. There is no choice but to go with new and fight the issues and hopefully get regulation from government that stops this crap if the companies don't do it themselves.

Just get a view of the software agreement that comes in the purchase contract.

There is precedent for bypassing EULA when it comes to something provably broken and insecure. In this case where you can use the US governments own cybersecurity guidance on securing connected systems, it is very easy to prove the insecurity of these systems from the owners perspective. In this case everything is in place for the issue to be pushed and brought to the forefront.

Additionally, this is strengthened even more by Rivian's design as I understand it. Someone could possibly fill me in here since I have no way to test, but the way that I uderstand the way Rivian has things set up, they have certain functions that only enable with a connect+ subscription. Things like streaming video or other things that make life better while sitting and charging. Those things are simple network apps. Rivians STATED reason for disabling them is because we are not paying enough for the baseline cellular connectivity to cover that level of data transfer. But, if this is true, they are likely lying about that since if it were JUST a data plan limitation, then they would not be artificially force disabling apps that can run with a wifi hotspot like your phone or a 3rd party 4g/5g bridge with firewall running in the car for it to connect to. The fact that they seem to be force disabling those apps shows that the true intention is purely punitive to punish for not buying the connectivity that gives them unfettered access to the system since they are in full control of everything about the cellular connectivity. If they were truly ONLY concerned with the cost of the cellular connection, then they would not be forcefully disabling apps if you dont buy the upgraded cellular and they would just let the app work if any network connectivity existed at all, regardless of where it is served from. If people can readily and easily use their own firewalls, then it becomes trivial to lock Rivian out of the thing that we own, but it is also just as trivial to let them in when and only when there is a documented need for it to happen, not just leaving it open to them all the time.

So stated a different way, they are doing things to make it difficult or impossible for the owner to work around their gathering of our data and maintaining control versus any reasoning that can be related back to true security needs. This is the weaponization of locked down systems that I have mentioned before. They aren't interested in security, they are interested only in control and a captive audience that they can datamine.

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