Your Car Is Tracking You. Abusive Partners May Be, Too.

Illustration by Jeff Östberg, New York Times
Illustration by Jeff Östberg, New York Times
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Your Car Is Tracking You. Abusive Partners May Be, Too.

Illustration by Jeff Östberg, New York Times
Illustration by Jeff Östberg, New York Times

By: Kashmir Hill

Apps that remotely track and control cars are being weaponized by abusive partners. Car manufacturers have been slow to respond, according to victims and experts.

After almost 10 years of marriage, Christine Dowdall, wanted out. In September 2022, Dowdall, a real estate agent, fled their home in Covington, La., driving her Mercedes-Benz C300 sedan to her daughter’s house near Shreveport. Her husband, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, didn’t want to let her go.

Ms. Dowdall, 59, started occasionally seeing a strange new message on the display in her Mercedes, about a location-based service called “mbrace.” The second time it happened, she took a photograph and searched for the name online.

“I realized, oh my God, that’s him tracking me,” Ms. Dowdall said.

“Mbrace” was part of “Mercedes me” — a suite of connected services for the car, accessible via a smartphone app. Ms. Dowdall had only ever used the Mercedes Me app to make auto loan payments. She hadn’t realized that the service could also be used to track the car’s location.

One night, when she visited a male friend’s home, her husband sent the man a message with a thumbs-up emoji. A nearby camera captured his car driving in the area, according to the detective who worked on her case.

Ms. Dowdall called Mercedes customer service repeatedly to try to remove her husband’s digital access to the car, but the loan and title were in his name. Even though she was making the payments, had a restraining order against her husband, and had been granted sole use of the car during divorce proceedings, Mercedes representatives told her that her husband was the customer so he would be able to keep his access. There was no button she could press to take away the app’s connection to the vehicle.

“This is not the first time that I’ve heard something like this,” one of the representatives told Ms. Dowdall.

A spokeswoman for Mercedes-Benz said the company did not comment on “individual customer matters.”

A car, to its driver, can feel like a sanctuary. A place to sing favorite songs off key, to cry, to vent or to drive somewhere no one knows you’re going.

Modern cars have been called “smartphones with wheels” because they are internet-connected and have myriad methods of data collection, from cameras and seat weight sensors to records of how hard you brake and corner.

Most drivers don’t realize how much information their cars are collecting and who has access to it, said Jen Caltrider, a privacy researcher at Mozilla who reviewed the privacy policies of more than 25 car brands and found surprising disclosures, such as Nissan saying it might collect information about “sexual activity.”

“People think their car is private,” Ms. Caltrider said. “With a computer, you know where the camera is and you can put tape over it. Once you’ve bought a car and you find it is bad at privacy, what are you supposed to do?”

Privacy advocates are concerned by how car companies are using and sharing consumers’ data — with insurance companies, for example — and drivers’ inability to turn the data collection off.

For car owners, the upside of this data-palooza has come in the form of smartphone apps that allow them to check a car’s location when, say, they forget where it is parked; to lock and unlock the vehicle remotely; and to turn it on or off. Some apps can even remotely set the car’s climate controls, make the horn honk or turn on its lights. After setting up the app, the car’s owner can grant access to a limited number of other drivers.

- Controlling partners

Controlling partners have tracked their victims’ cars in the past using GPS devices and Apple AirTags.

A San Francisco man used his remote access to the Tesla Model X sport utility vehicle he co-owned with his wife to harass her after they separated, according to a lawsuit she filed anonymously in San Francisco Superior Court in 2020.

According to a legal complaint against her husband and Tesla, the car’s lights and horns were activated in a parking garage. On hot days, she would arrive at her car and discover the heat was running so that it was uncomfortably hot, while on cold days, she would find that the air-conditioner had been activated from afar. Her husband, she said in court documents, used the location-finding feature on the Tesla to identify her new residence, which she had hoped to keep secret from him.

The New York Times



Xiaomi Raises EV Sales Target, Plans New Overseas Stores as Q4 Revenue Jumps

A man walks past a logo of Xiaomi, a Chinese manufacturer of consumer electronics, outside a shop in Mumbai, India, May 11, 2022. (Reuters)
A man walks past a logo of Xiaomi, a Chinese manufacturer of consumer electronics, outside a shop in Mumbai, India, May 11, 2022. (Reuters)
TT
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Xiaomi Raises EV Sales Target, Plans New Overseas Stores as Q4 Revenue Jumps

A man walks past a logo of Xiaomi, a Chinese manufacturer of consumer electronics, outside a shop in Mumbai, India, May 11, 2022. (Reuters)
A man walks past a logo of Xiaomi, a Chinese manufacturer of consumer electronics, outside a shop in Mumbai, India, May 11, 2022. (Reuters)

China's Xiaomi on Tuesday reported an almost 50% jump in fourth-quarter revenue, beating analyst estimates, and raised its target for electric vehicle deliveries this year to 350,000 from 300,000.

The world's third-largest smartphone maker, whose product lines extend to home appliances and cars, also said it planned to expand its store network across China this year and open 10,000 new Mi Home stores overseas in the next five years.

The company reported a 48.8% rise in fourth-quarter revenue to 109 billion yuan ($15.1 billion), beating the 103.94 billion yuan average of 17 analyst estimates compiled by LSEG. Adjusted net profit jumped 69.4% year-on-year to 8.32 billion yuan, ahead of the average estimate of 6.399 billion yuan, Reuters reported.

Xiaomi president Lu Weibing said on an earnings call that he saw great potential for the company's products - from phones and tablets to cars - in overseas markets, though he added the complexity of expanding abroad was "quite high". Lu said the company aimed to start shipping cars overseas in 2027. Xiaomi's Hong Kong-listed shares closed up 3.3% before the earnings release. The stock has surged 284% over the past 12 months amid investor enthusiasm for its EV plans.

Xiaomi began manufacturing EVs last year with the launch of the SU7 sedan after selling smartphones, household appliances and smart gadgets for most of its 15-year history.

It reported 32.1 billion yuan in revenue for its EV business in 2024, delivering more than 135,000 SU7 sedans. The adjusted net loss related to its EV and other new initiatives reached 6.2 billion yuan.

Xiaomi's fourth-quarter global smartphone shipments rose 5% from a year earlier to 42.7 million handsets, ranking it third globally, with a market share of 13%, data from researcher Canalys showed.

In China, its largest market, shipments surged 29% to 12.2 million handsets over the same period, ranking it fourth, with a market share of 16%, according to the Canalys data.

Lu said Xiaomi aimed to ship 180 million smartphones this year, versus

in 2024, adding the company would invest up to 8 billion yuan, about a quarter of its total research and development budget this year, in AI-related initiatives.