
Honda Refuses to Track Stolen Accord Because Owner Didn't Pay for HondaLink - gravy
https://www.thedrive.com/news/31444/honda-refuses-to-track-stolen-accord-because-owner-didnt-pay-for-hondalink-report
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freehunter
Is 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?

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belorn
If this had been in EU then the owner could have requested the information
under GDPR, as the tracking data is private information connected to the
person.

Honda do not have a service where if you pay them they will track your car.
Honda track car owners, and if you pay them will give you a copy of the data.

It is very questionable if user data is owned by the company that do the
tracking. How would it look if Facebook withhold evidence that a victim
requested in regard to information they themselves uploaded? Personally I
found find it rather poor behavior if they extorted the victim before
returning the victims personal information.

"Man got unknowingly data mined, company refuse to return private information
to the victim of an ongoing crime." sounds like a story to me.

The key part of the article is that company is now saying that they did not
track the car. If Honda never had the information then the argument that "Man
didn't pay for service, company did not provide said service" make more sense.

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freehunter
>If this had been in EU

But it wasn't, so none of the rest matters.

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belorn
Is a GDPR request the same as "Amazon refused to give me an EC2 instance with
2GB of RAM because I only paid for 1GB"?

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freehunter
Are they tracking these cars in the EU?

On second thought don't bother answering that because again, this didn't
happen in the EU so GDPR means absolutely nothing.

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belorn
Okey lets not take about GDPR and simply talk about personal data gathered by
companies. Is requesting a copy of that data the same as requesting a service
without paying for it?

And since we are not talking about GDPR, who owns the personal data gathered
by a company. The company or the person. Is there any argument in favor of the
person having a right to access that data without paying?

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yabadabadoes
I'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?

~~~
beerandt
I 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
> _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
Complying 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
> _Complying with police and /or court orders is a cost of doing business_

If the police present a warrant, yes. Everything else is customer service.

~~~
mlyle
Option 1: comply with LE+owner's request; they have a chance to recover
vehicle; costs are low and bad PR is avoided.

Option 2: don't comply with LE+owner's request; deal with later warrant at
higher cost (now you have compliance & legal involved); vehicle is not
recovered, bad PR is obtained, and everyone loses.

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JumpCrisscross
> _Option 1: comply with LE+owner 's request; they have a chance to recover
> vehicle; costs are low and bad PR is avoided_

Consequence 1b: you released tracking information to a stalker. They fooled
your rep into thinking police were involved. Not only do you have a PR
nightmare, you've also opened yourself up to legal liability.

I'm not arguing this is the right balance. Finding that balance depends on
branding, legal and financial factors. But it's not an unreasonable position.

~~~
mlyle
> They fooled your rep into thinking police were involved.

This is why you have policy for appropriate response and organizational
escalation in place if necessary. Not hard to contact the department in
question via another directory and verify the request.

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beerandt
>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.

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blaser-waffle
Only 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
Maybe, but that's more of an argument against hypothetical police inefficiency
than anything else.

~~~
mlyle
I 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
I don't think that's the usual cause of the delay, though.

And for time critical issues like this, it shouldn't be.

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kbos87
I 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.

~~~
loopz
Regardless 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
They offered to do that if presented with a warrant

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rabeener
There’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
We 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
I 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.

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devtul
Take that indignation and push for legislation to install active tracking on
vehicles at all times. /s

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woliveirajr
> 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... ?

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hsnewman
If 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.

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driverdan
I 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
If 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.

~~~
driverdan
There 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.

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tabtab
Why 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.)

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mullingitover
I 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
I'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
Unless 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.

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SanchoPanda
I 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.

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Jamwinner
Thats already the default except for the option to buy-out of the system.

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new_guy
Wouldn't that make Honda an accessory to vehicle theft? They know where it is
but won't tell anyone.

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ronnier
If 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?

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hiccuphippo
Can'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?

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ceejayoz
How 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.

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freehunter
If the car has a cell connection they can enable the feature remotely.

