A year after hackers demonstrated the risks of connected cars, the FBI and the US Department of Transportation have warned consumers of the risks in internet connected vehicles.
This warning comes as automobile manufacturers are pushing their new breed of motor cars as being software platforms rather than vehicles and calls into question how well security and safety are being designed into their products.
One of the recurrent features of these sort of warnings is how regulators, manufacturers and software designers try to push the risks back onto consumers rather than the companies designing these systems.
Officials said that while not all car hacking incidents result in safety risks, consumers should take the appropriate steps to minimize their own risks.
It’s hard to see what consumers can really do, as most of these systems are ‘black boxes’ protected by strict terms preventing users from seeing, let alone understanding, the software running the vehicles. Customers have to trust the manufacturers to do the right thing.
For the Internet of Things, and connected cars, to be successful they have to deliver value to consumers and have the confidence of the market. Right now many of these features seem to do neither.